Speed and Purpose
by Forgotten Muse
Summary: For decades the many races of Planet Mobius had enjoyed an era of peace. But nothing lasts forever. This is the story of how it ended, and of one young hedgehog's search for his purpose in life. Fleetway, Sonic 1 prequel and adaptation.
1. Change

Speed and Purpose

By T Evans

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sonic or STC, not one bit. Don't sue me, for I have no money.**

**At all.**

A/N

**Long time no see, fanfictiondotnet. **

**Yes I'm still working on this fanfic. Unfortunately though, I'm also a full-time student among other things, so I haven't had much time to work on it. But I haven't abandoned it (if anyone even still remembers this thing! I'm determined to finish this.)**

**I've made a few tweaks and rearranged the fic into smaller chapters, and added a new one. From here on chapter length will vary- sticking to the 20-page format was not working given my real-life commitments. **

**In case you don't know, this fanfic is based on my own headcanon- which is based on the Fleetway universe with a few tweaks.**

**.**

Chapter 1

.

_This is the story of my life  
And I write it everyday  
I know it isn't black and white  
And it's anything but grey  
I know that no I'm not alright, but I feel ok cos  
Anything can, everything can happen_

-Bon Jovi

.

117,63222 light years from Earth, in a different time zone to our own and hidden within a region of dark matter lies the planet Mobius.

This is a world both familiar and alien. It is a place whose life forms look uncannily like those of Earth until you look more closely and see that some of those animals are people; where the days are the same length but you can look into the sky and see two moons there; where ordinary sights sit comfortably shoulder-to-shoulder with the bizarre, and where the laws of physics are made to be broken if you only know how.

In the years before Robotnik, Mobius' technology- though advanced- was an option, not a necessity. A few high-tech cities coexisted happily with vast swathes of unspoilt wilderness, dotted with the majestic ruins of long-lost civilisations. Like any inhabited world Mobius had its share of war and conflict- but for decades the hundreds of sentient species had lived together in relative harmony.

But as we all know, this era of peace was not destined to last forever.

This is the story of how it ended.

…

Sonic the hedgehog was running for his life.

Crossing the chasm via the log bridge had turned out to be a _very_ bad idea. Now it was collapsing behind him, log by log, and only his speed prevented him from plummeting to certain death in the black abyss below. He gritted his teeth and tried to coax a little more acceleration from his exhausted body.

Suddenly there was a hungry screech and movement to either side of him- a pair of vicious pteranodons were diving from above, their huge leathery wings tucked to their sides as they rocketed in for the kill.

_Not a problem_, Sonic smirked to himself. The reptiles were so intent on having hedgehog for dinner that they hadn't seen each other. He waited until the very last moment then leapt powerfully upwards, causing the two would-be predators to collide in midair and fall away behind him in a tangle of claws, beaks and wings.

As he landed he felt the log give way beneath his feet and lunged desperately for the edge of the cliff. His gloved hands clutched at the grasses hanging over the edge; he gave a sigh of relief as they held firm, then hauled himself up onto safe, solid ground.

Sonic glanced over his shoulder to see the last remnants of the bridge disappear into the darkness. But he couldn't pause to catch his breath- now he could hear something else approaching, a sort of droning noise…

"…And that's your _other_ problem, young hedgehog… you just don't pay attention!" this was punctuated by the snap of a ruler on the edge of his desk, which jerked him out of his doze.

The teenaged Sonic the hedgehog blinked and glanced around the otherwise deserted classroom before eventually focusing on the face of the teacher.

"Uh… seven hundred and fifty miles per hour?" he ventured in the hope that he had been asked a question.

The teacher- a mole- gave a long-suffering sigh and pushed his glasses further up his snout. "Sonic, I know you're not stupid. Maybe if you'd just _attempt_ to listen to what you're being told for more than three minutes you'd actually learn something..."

"Maybe if you'd just _attempt _to be less boring," the hedgehog suggested, swinging on the back two legs of his chair.

"I try to help him and all I get is attitude," the exasperated teacher muttered to himself. He was tired, it was the last day before the summer holidays, and he just wanted to go home and have dinner. The mole eyed his troublesome pupil and tried to decide if he actually had the patience to deal with him.

Feet in battered white trainers rested on the edge of the desk. The teenager's dark brown eyes had a lively spark in them that suggested more intelligence than he let on, and his furry tan muzzle was fixed in an irreverent smirk.

His quills were a lighter brown than his eyes and forever grew in an untameable mess. Covered in these sharp spines from forehead to tail, hedgehogs had never needed to evolve great size or strength to defend themselves so were not the largest or most imposing of Mobians. Sonic was lightly built even for a hedgehog; he was somewhat small for his age, and still had the slightly awkward look of a growing teenager. But what he lacked in size he made up for in pent-up energy. If he wasn't dozing off he was fidgeting- his foot would tap on the floor or his fingers drum against the table and he was never still for more than a few seconds at a time. When he spoke his hands were constantly in jerky motion, gesturing to enhance whatever point he was making. If he was particularly excited his words and sentences ran into each other as if he couldn't get them out fast enough.

And one thing every teacher in the school agreed on was that they had no idea what to do with him. Sonic became bored too quickly to learn much from a book or lecture. He undoubtedly had a talent for sports- well, apart from swimming- and although not particularly strong had an amazing running speed and the balance and agility of a natural gymnast. But sports came with rules, and Sonic did not like rules. Nor did he seem to have any idea of his own limitations. He took insane risks and overextended himself on a regular basis, so often in fact that he probably spent more time in the nurse's office than any other pupil.

The mole sighed, realising he probably wasn't going to get anywhere, and that anything he did say would go in one of the hedgehog's pointed little ears and out the other.

"I'm just not getting through, am I? Go on, you might as well go home." Sonic had grabbed his bag and almost bolted out the door when he added wearily, "I assume we won't be seeing you next term…?"

The teenager's grin reappeared in the doorway. "Not a chance," he confirmed happily.

Sonic had just turned fourteen. This was an important milestone for any young Mobian. It meant that, although he would not be considered adult for several years yet, he _was_ old enough to make his own decisions. Which included leaving school if he so chose, among other freedoms.

"Have you thought about this?" the mole made one final effort. "You really need to decide what you're going to do with your life, Sonic. You can't make a living just running around-"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say…" Sonic humoured him. "Can I go now or what?"

"As long as you're still on school premises, hedgehog, that's '_Can I go now or what, sir?'_"

"Yes sir, as ordered, sir!" Sonic grinned mischievously and, showing absolutely no respect whatsoever, snapped him a mock salute.

Rolling his eyes, the teacher made a shooing motion with one large paw. "Get going before I keep you here another hour. And don't slam the-"

The door slammed. Sonic was gone.

A resigned sigh. "I'll be surprised if that hedgehog ever makes anything of himself."

…

Sonic pushed back the cuff of his glove and glanced at his watch.

"Gah- I'm late!" he exclaimed, dismayed, and after pausing just long enough to drop off his tattered schoolbag, pelted off through the Emerald Hill Village which had been home for as long as he could remember.

Emerald Hill was the most southerly of South Island's many Hill Zones. It lived up to its name, with gently rolling hills dotted with coconut trees and covered in what locals argued was the greenest grass on the whole island. Snaking through it all was the Emerald River, which tumbled over a series of waterfalls on its way to the cliffs and then the sea. If you looked south from the cliffs there were views of the vast Mobian Ocean. To the west was the narrow channel separating the island from Theria, Mobius' largest continent. On a clear day like today you could make out the suspension bridge connecting the two landmasses and even the tall skyscrapers of the Metropolis Zone further away across the water.

Emerald Hill was a quiet rural Zone and the village reflected this. The round-windowed houses of the sleepy market village were wooden and cylindrical to resemble the trees they had been made from, and although they did have some concessions to technology such as electricity, running water and plumbing, powered vehicles were few and far between and only a narrow tiled road wound its way though the village.

Sonic of course took all this for granted as he ran through the street, dodging past and sometimes yelling a quick hello to other villagers. Some of the people he narrowly avoided collisions with were clothed and some were not; most, like Sonic, walked upright and had hands instead of paws, wings or flippers, while here and there a person ambled along on all fours or flapped through the air on feathered wings. These individuals were known as Old Mobians, that particular bit of evolution having happened- as far as the archaeologists knew- many thousands of years ago.

The hedgehog was wandering around the village outskirts by the time he found who he was looking for. Johnny Lightfoot was a rabbit, grey-furred and blue-eyed, rather tall and lanky for his age. His long ears added an extra foot to his height.

"I was about to give up and go home- where've you been?" he asked.

"Detention," Sonic replied almost proudly.

The ever-sensible Johnny rolled his eyes. "Sonic, only _you_ could manage to get detention on the last day of term."

"The last _ever."_ A grin. "Thank goodness. The place was doing my head in."

The rabbit, who hadn't known about this, looked slightly worried. "You're not going back in September?"

Sonic looked at him as if he'd grown an extra pair of ears. "Me? Are you kidding? C'mon, Lightfoot, can you honestly see _me _doing _exams?"_

"Well… no… but what _are_ you going to do?" Johnny was a year older than Sonic- more or less- but unlike the hedgehog had decided to stay in school.

Sonic appeared to think for a moment. "Dunno yet," he shrugged, grinning. "I'll find out when I do it, I guess." His eyes lit up as he remembered why he was there. "Hey, didya get those rings for me?"

Johnny showed him the two large golden rings he had collected earlier. They hung loosely from his arm and clinked together softly.

"Yeah, but I still don't think that-"

"Cool!" Sonic interrupted. "Race you to the loop, okay?"

And without waiting for an answer, he was off.

Johnny Lightfoot had known Sonic since the hedgehog had first arrived in the Zone. Why the well-groomed rabbit had befriended the bedraggled, five year old little ball of quills that Sonic had been was anybody's guess. The two seemed so different in personality and appearance that most people were amazed they got along at all. Johnny had a calm thoughtful nature and was content to be the quiet one in a group- but you could be sure that anything he did say had had a lot of thought put into it and would usually make perfect sense. Sonic of course was the opposite.

It was soon clear that the two made a good team, however, as each provided something the other lacked: Sonic was confident and assertive, while Johnny had enough common sense (and manners) for the two of them.

Of course in many situations it was Sonic's stubbornness rather than Johnny's good sense that won. Such was the case as the unlikely pair stared up at an object that was a common sight on Mobius but would have been extraordinary anywhere else: a giant, upright, rectangular stone slab with a round hole in the middle big enough to fly a small plane through.

These 'loops' had probably been built to resemble the golden rings of Mobius but no one knew for sure who had constructed them or when. Just like the rings you could find them almost everywhere on South Island. This particular loop was located near the cliffs, just off an old track-way through the Zone. It was a large one and like most of the stonework in Emerald Hill it was covered in gaudy yellow and orange tiles, but several of these had fallen off over the years. The whole structure leaned slightly forwards so that it seemed to tower menacingly over the two teenagers standing in its shadow.

"Are you _sure_ about this?" Johnny wondered, shaking his head.

"Aren't I always?" A grin.

"It didn't work last time…"

"So?" the smaller Mobian raised an eyebrow, the grin, if anything, getting wider.

"Or the time before. I don't think it's even _possible_."

"You doubt _me_?" Sonic put a hand on his chest, pretending to be shocked. "Did I not say I had a good feeling about this? Am I, or am I not, the fastest hedgehog in the Zone?"

Johnny gave a long-suffering sigh, and didn't bother to mention that he was also the _only_ hedgehog in the Zone, apart from elderly Mrs Rose who worked in the hairdresser's.

"Whatever you say, Sonic. I just don't see why you keep trying to do this when-"

"Because it's there," Sonic interrupted. "Because nobody's done it before, and-" he pointed a skinny arm at the stone ring, "Because when I say I'm going to run all the way round that loop, I _mean_ I'm going to run all the way round that loop."

Having had this conversation a dozen times before and knowing just how stubborn his friend could be, Johnny sighed again. Once Sonic got an idea in his head there was no swaying him. It was as if he didn't believe gravity existed, or something.

"Sonic…"

"C'mon, Johnny, where's your sense of adventure?" Another grin. "Still got those gold rings? Good. Just chuck me one when I tell you." With that, Sonic clambered into the giant loop- the inside was smooth grey stone, so it almost looked like he was standing in the curve of a giant roll of sticky tape. Or like a pet rodent in a very large wheel.

Johnny had to fight to stop himself laughing at that image as Sonic eyed the inner surface of the loop, then glanced back at the rabbit.

"Watch and learn, dude."

That was the thing about Sonic: he didn't give up easily once he had decided he was going to achieve something. 'Impossible' was another thing the hedgehog did not believe in. The strange thing was that he was proved right surprisingly often- not always, but sometimes.

So perhaps, Johnny thought, he _would_ manage to run the loop this time. In which case he'd immediately find some other challenge to occupy him.

Or maybe he'd just concuss himself again…

Not that Johnny could stop him now he had made his mind up.

The rabbit shifted from one foot to the other nervously.

Sonic, meanwhile, had started jogging back and forth along the bottom of the loop in a pendulum motion. Contrary to what Johnny thought, he _did_ know a little about gravity- enough at least to realise that if he turned on his heel and ran the _other_ way as soon as he had gone as far as he could up the side of the stone ring, he could use his own momentum to go faster, and reach a higher point on the opposite side…

The hard part was building up enough speed to reach the top and then over it without falling. Sonic had convinced himself he could do it; roller coasters did it all the time, so why couldn't he?

Running up the side of the loop again, he felt himself being tugged back down and turned, knowing from painful experience that if he tried going any further around at this speed his feet would start to slip out from under him. Faster.

Gravity worked with him as Sonic sprinted back down. He felt the drag of the wind in his spines as he accelerated, his breathing coming more quickly. Then back up the curve- a little higher this time- turning- and down again. Faster!

He was about a third of the way around the loop now, but the young hedgehog was already feeling the first warning signs of fatigue- a heaviness in his chest and legs.

Sonic smirked to himself. _Oh no you don't._ Time, he thought, to use his 'secret weapon'.

"Now!" he shouted as he reached the top of his arc. Johnny tossed a gold ring in a way they had practised earlier, so that when Sonic reached his turning point on the other side he was in the perfect position to catch it.

Actually, it was not so much 'catch' as 'absorb', for as soon as the ring touched his outstretched hand it dissolved into a golden shimmer that passed right though his glove and instantly filled him with a sensation of warmth and energy.

Sonic set his teeth in a grin, lowered his head and charged down the curve of the loop, the brief burst of power from the ring erasing his tiredness- at least for a few seconds- and giving him the extra boost he needed to hurtle up the other side.

He still did not have enough speed to make it all the way around, but it was close… very close. Almost halfway!

He turned, breathlessly shouting for Johnny to throw the second ring. Sonic caught it on the way back up; for a moment his running became effortless and he felt a surge of exhilaration. This was what he was _made_ for, he thought suddenly, and would have laughed if he could have spared the breath for it.

Sonic made a split-second decision then not to turn around and build up more speed. He was so close anyway, and of _course_ he was going to make it.

Speed overcame gravity as the slope in front of him became a wall, and then began to arch over… and he was still going. He felt a 'falling' sensation in his stomach and knew that if he looked down, he would see sky. Up ahead the grey stone of the ring was beginning its curve down towards the ground.

It was at this point Sonic realised his speed had dropped. His feet scrabbled for grip on the surface _above_ him and then, after a long, torturous moment, left it altogether as gravity finally had its own way.

Moments later a tightly-curled ball of quills smacked against the lowest point of the inside of the loop ("ow!") then rolled off the edge and hit the ground for a second, equally indignant "ow".

The young hedgehog uncurled himself and started to get up, realised his head was spinning from being practically upside down, lost his balance and sat back down on the grass with a thump.

Johnny was looking down at him with an expression that was partly _I-told-you-so _but mostly concern.

"You okay?"

Sonic nodded, out of breath, bruised, but mostly unharmed. His quills had absorbed most of the impact.

"Yeah. Fine." he muttered. Scowled. Paused to let the dizziness pass.

Then he was suddenly on his feet, shouting and glaring furiously at the offending stone loop-

"-Stupid bloody thing_Iwassoclosewhydidn'- _OW!"

Sonic yelped and grabbed his foot, having punctuated his last 'stupid' with a kick at the side of the loop- which being made of stone, hurt quite a bit.

He then erupted into language most adults would have found shocking. Fortunately most of it was said too fast to make out.

Johnny had seen enough of these explosions to know that the best thing to do was just wait and let Sonic rant himself out. Which he did eventually, and abruptly flopped down on the edge of the stone ring. There was a frustrated glint in his brown eyes, which were narrowed thoughtfully- meaning he was probably already plotting how he was going to get it right next time.

"Better?" Johnny said.

"Much."

Sonic's grumpy silence was broken by a sudden noise- that of hands clapping. It was not a round of applause, but a mocking and sarcastic parody of one. The two teens looked in the direction of the sound and groaned.

"Lance and Brindle. Wonderful," Sonic muttered, watching the pair of slightly older youths approach.

"That's all we need," Johnny agreed unhappily. "They must've followed us."

Lance stopped clapping, his thin muzzle smirking nastily. He was a dog, yellowish in colour, with a wiry, powerful frame and sharp features that were not improved by the look of contempt they now wore.

"Well, that was an impressive bit of… what would you call that?"

"Diving?" suggested the shaggy mound of fur and muscle behind him. Brindle the Old Mobian badger sat back on his haunches and crossed his massive, clawed paws on his chest. "But don't you need _water_ for that?"

"Nah, little squirt's afraid of water." Lance grinned down at Sonic. "Aren't you?"

This got a chuckle like rocks grinding together from the badger.

"Shut up," Sonic hissed, drawing himself up to his full -if modest- height. Bad enough that they'd seen his fall…

"Leave him alone, Lance…" Johnny started.

"Why should I, buckteeth? Not denying it is he?" Lance wandered nonchalantly up to the stone loop, the heavy grey form of Brindle padding after him, low to the ground when on all fours but with enough mass for the three others put together.

"So," the dog glanced at Sonic, "Trying to run round this thing again, hmm? You'll never do it," he remarked casually. "The thing is, Sonic… I don't like to crush your hopes-" a snigger- "But hedgehogs just aren't built for speed. Especially runty little hedgehogs like you." He leaned back against the tiled stone. "Unlike me." The dog seemed to examine Sonic critically for a few seconds- the small brown hedgehog was visibly seething and his ears were laid back against his head, which only amused Lance more. As if in an aside to Brindle, he added "If he even _is _all hedgehog. Everyone knows his parentage is a bit… dubious. Also unlike me."

Sonic snarled at that. His quills bristled and stood up, and he threw off the calming hand Johnny put on his shoulder.

"Really? I could have sworn I saw a little _poodle_ in you, Lance."

Johnny had seen the size of Brindle's claws and muttered, "Don't, Sonic…"

"Poodle? I'm pure greyhound, runt. But I'd rather be a poodle than a hyperactive weirdo. Probably why your family dumped you, I know I would have…"

That did it. Although Johnny tried to hold him back, grabbing him by the arm and telling him to stop because Lance and Brindle were bigger than either of them, Sonic wrenched free and charged at the greyhound with a snarl of fury.

"I _don't_ think so," rumbled the badger. With surprising speed for a creature his size, he moved to intercept Sonic and tripped him with a muscular forelimb. The hedgehog went flying.

"Aww, too slow," Lance mocked, as Sonic spat out grass stems and dirt and scrambled to his feet, bruised pride turning to black anger on his face. The pair began to lope away, laughing, and Sonic started forwards after them.

"You wanna see how fast I am? Huh? Then you'd better start _really running_ because I'm gonna-"

"Sonic! Don't bother, there's no point…" Johnny quickly stepped in front to block him before he could bolt off and do something stupid.

"I'm not letting them get away with that-" he glowered after the retreating bullies but much to the rabbit's relief did not try to chase them.

"It's not worth it. They're just idiots, Sonic. At least that Brindle is. Lance… well… he's probably jealous." This wasn't just Johnny finding the right thing to say- Sonic's bragging about being the fastest creature in the Zone did after all have a lot of truth in it.

Sonic sagged a little. "Yeah, I'd like to see _him_try to run that loop," he muttered sulkily. "Moron. What did I do to him, anyway?"

"If I remember right… he used to go round saying _he_ was the fastest thing in Emerald Hill, then you beat him in a race…"

The hedgehog thought for a moment- and his scowl began to lighten and change to an amused smile. "_Races,_" he corrected. "I think it was three or four."

"And then Lance accused you of cheating and you lost your temper and walked into him."

"Backwards," Sonic finished, a wicked grin slowly spreading on his face as he shook out his quills. Unlike some hedgehogs' they were relatively stiff and razor sharp for the last few inches. "Ooh, I bet that hurt... '_Oh dear, ever so sorry, I didn't see you there, dude…'" _the grin turned into a snigger. "No wonder he's always so stuck up. Maybe-" and his voice rose to a shout, so that the now-distant greyhound might hear it, "-HE'S STILL GOT A QUILL JAMMED RIGHT UP HIS-"

"Sonic!"

"What?" Innocence.

"That is _not_ funny!" Johnny tried to keep a straight face, but failed miserably and was within moments laughing along with Sonic.

Later, after getting the grass out of his fur as best he could, Sonic climbed to the flat top of the loop by way of a broken section down one side and perched there with his legs dangling over the edge, looking out at the sea.

What clouds there were in the sky had started to turn pink and purple and the sun was beginning to sink towards the distant city. There would be an impressive sunset in a few hours time.

Sonic smiled to himself. "One day I'll show them," he said softly.

"What?" Johnny hadn't attempted the climb, and was sitting below, inside the loop.

"I said," Sonic peered over the edge, beaming, "I'm gonna run this loop!"

He thumped his fist against the stone for emphasis. Johnny grinned back up at him. Despite his scepticism earlier, he could see how close the hedgehog had come to completing a whole circuit. And Sonic knew it too, so he wouldn't be giving up anytime soon- especially after what Lance had said. Nothing made Sonic more determined to do something than someone saying he couldn't.

"I didn't think it was possible, but you nearly did it this time," Johnny congratulated.

"Yeah! I just need to be a little bit faster…" he trailed off into a thoughtful silence, but with Sonic such silences were always short- Johnny had taken to counting the seconds, and sure enough he had only counted to five when Sonic abruptly started talking again. "-Hey, were those rings a good idea, or were those rings a good idea?"

"Yep, Sonic, those rings were a good idea," the rabbit echoed, amused at his friend's usual utter lack of humility.

"Maybe I'll try three next time," the hedgehog mused.

Jokingly, Johnny replied with: "How many of those do you think I can throw? I'm warning you, I'm stopping at fifty."

"Oh ha ha." Sonic played with the idea for a moment. "Fifty rings? I'd probably explode or something!"

"Sonic? Please tell me you're not going to try it."

The hedgehog just laughed.

Sonic's other talent- besides running- was using the golden rings that could be found floating in midair all over Mobius for a quick energy boost. When asked, he described it as being 'like caffeine, only better'- and as far as he knew nobody else could do it. The rings didn't have any other use anyway. Many Mobians called them 'fool's gold' for although they had a very attractive golden yellow colour, as soon as they were scratched or otherwise tampered with they simply disintegrated into golden sparks and disappeared. Sometimes they did that on their own after a while, and tended to appear out of nothing just as spontaneously. You couldn't make anything useful out of a gold ring so they were simply regarded as curiosities and often ended up as safe playthings for Mobian children. Which is how Sonic discovered his ability.

The rings weighed next to nothing and felt warm to the touch, or so Sonic had been told. Not that he knew, as a ring always became absorbed as soon as he brushed against it whether he wanted it to or not.

"So how come you're so determined to do this, Sonic?" Johnny asked eventually, for the second time that day. "In fact, you're _always_ doing this kind of thing. Running along things, jumping off things… the more dangerous the better."

They had had this conversation a number of times. Sonic answered him the way he always did: which was to shrug, smile enigmatically and say, "I want to be faster."

The answer to Johnny's question was partly boredom. Apart from bullying types such as Lance and Brindle, the equivalent of whom existed in every civilisation on every world in every universe, Emerald Hill was almost idyllic. But the village was also far too quiet and the people content with their slow pace of life. Nothing ever really changed in Emerald Hill. It offered little with which an active, adventurous young hedgehog like Sonic could occupy his time, apart from exploring and testing his abilities against the hills, cliffs, and odd semi-ruined stone structures that had become his personal obstacle course.

The Zone was home, and it was beautiful, but nothing ever _happened._

However, Sonic's risk taking was mainly because he never felt so alive as when he was running. He was rightfully proud of his speed- as far as he knew hedgehogs were not known for being good sprinters. But after years of training himself around Emerald Hill he could outrun anyone in the Zone. He could sprint at over thirty miles per hour easily- and if he really pushed himself he could reach much greater speeds for a short time, a little longer if he had rings.

People had occasionally suggested half-jokingly that there had been a cheetah somewhere in Sonic's ancestry, and certain unpleasant individuals had taken to whispering 'mutation!' nastily behind his back. Being an orphan Sonic could not dispute either of these claims, but they did not have the power to discourage him for long.

Sonic ran. He was _driven _to improve his skills further. _I can do better,_ he was forever telling himself. The buzz he got from beating his own record was always short-lived and quickly replaced by restlessness and an urge to do it all over again, but faster. Sonic had one particular goal that he was aiming for and he would not stop until he had reached it- no matter how impossible it seemed.

Lately he had been frustrated by the fact that his times had not been improving much, as if perhaps he had reached the limit of what his body could do. Not that he would ever admit _that._

However, today he felt buoyed with enthusiasm, so much so that not even his failure to run the loop or Lance and Brindle's bullying could sour his mood for more than a few minutes. Perhaps it was because- as he saw it- he had finally thrown off the shackles of school and was free to do as he pleased. Or maybe because of a feeling he had that something, at last, was going to _happen._

Sonic gazed at the distant Metropolis, a breeze from the ocean whispering in his brown fur. Yes, although nothing ever changed in Emerald Hill, today he could sense change in the air and everything seemed possible. He was filled with certainty that soon his life would finally take him out of the mundane Hill Zones, that he would get to see places like that city and when he did he would be doing something that mattered, even though he did not know yet what it might be. And most importantly of all, he would prove to the villagers- he would prove to _Mobius_- that he wasn't just 'that useless Sonic kid'.

One day his name would mean something.

Sonic had been roughly five years old when he had staggered into Emerald Hill Village, weak and half-drowned. He'd had no memory of anything apart from his name. That too was nearly taken from him after the village council failed to discover where the little hedgehog had come from or who his family may have been. It wasn't a _proper_ name after all. But he was stubborn even then, and they eventually gave in.

Speed was his talent, Sonic was his name, and all his life he had been determined to live up to it.

Sonic aimed to be the first Mobian ever to break the sound barrier on foot.


	2. Battles

**Chapter 2**

**.**

Sonic's dreams of speed did not come to fruition the next day, or the day after that. The wind of change he had sensed seemed to herald change of a far more ordinary kind- in the weather.

That breeze had brought a storm from the southern sea. It rained. More than rained, it poured. But when the weather changed in Emerald Hill it did so quickly, so that on the middle of the third day the downpour subsided to a miserable drizzle and eventually gave up altogether, leaving the sun peeking sheepishly through the clouds and huge puddles all over the paved street.

Sonic was glad that the rain had stopped so that his fur didn't have to be forever damp and the hills would not be a sea of mud much longer. That had prevented him from running much, meaning he had been bored out of his skull for the first few days of summer.

He did not like getting wet at all, so made a game of the puddles as he dashed through the village. The aim was to avoid them altogether, but sometimes that wasn't possible- to the dismay of passers by who got splashed with dirty brown water.

Sonic headed for the outer edges of the village where he had his own small house. It was more of a cabin really, but he was perfectly happy with it. This was another perk that came with being fourteen. Previously he had been what some called a 'pass the parcel' child. It was custom in the Hill Zones that orphans were taken care of by the community- the village council paid for his education and would provide an allowance until he was eighteen, but since there was no hedgehog family able to take him in he was passed between whoever had the extra space, staying with each person for a few months before moving to the next. Although he was still sociable this had given him a strong independent streak- so as soon as he was old enough to move out he had done so. Luckily it was also custom that when a house had been vacant for a particular amount of time it became free for anyone to claim. No one else had been interested in the little one-story building, but for a youngster who spent most of his time outside anyway it was ideal.

Sonic slammed the door behind him and glanced around the mess he called home. As always it looked like a bomb had gone off in the living room- a bomb made mostly of junk. The nature of this junk was ever-changing, since he tended to bring home anything he found interesting then leave it lying around somewhere once he got bored with it. Some of the more permanent features of the room were the empty food containers scattered about the place, the leaning towers of music cassettes stacked around a battered guitar, and an old Mega System games console whose wires snaked haphazardly all over the floor.

He swept some empty food wrappers off a small table and put down the pizza box he was carrying. Sonic ran various errands around the village for extra pocket money and the odd pizza delivery was one of his favourites; it was as dull a job as he could think of but paid in food as well as cash, which made it _very _worthwhile. There was no pizza like a free pizza.

"Want some?" he waved a sagging pizza slice at Johnny, who was standing amidst all the clutter where Sonic had left him. He held a two-pronged television aerial and was waving it about halfheartedly in an attempt to get the TV to show something other than static.

The rabbit eyed the sorry-looking pizza unenthusiastically. "I just ate at home."

"Fine by me," Sonic replied, grinned, downed the greasy slice in one go and reached for another. Given the chance Sonic would eat anything, and lots of it.

"Ugh, that's disgusting…." Johnny muttered and wrinkled his nose.

"Nothin' wrong with a bit of junk food," the hedgehog mumbled happily through a mouthful of cheese and tomato. "So-" he swallowed, frowning at the TV, "I take it you're having as much luck as I was…"

The second hand TV and games console were recent acquisitions. Sonic thought the TV had been an excellent find as they weren't that common in Emerald Hill- and now he thought he knew why because although the thing was fine for playing games on, it seemed unable to tune in to any stations at all. They were relatively close to the Metropolis and Star Light Zone wasn't _that_ far away; the TV should have been able to pick up _something_ from one of those built-up Zones but so far there was nothing but snow.

Johnny shook his head, lowering the antenna.

"I don't think you've got a good enough signal here, Sonic…"

"Sally's got a signal and she's just down the street," the hedgehog grumped,

"Sally's got a huge aerial sticking out of her house. You have this." He indicated the antenna, which was bent and sad-looking and may or may not have been made from a coat hanger.

Sonic snorted, pushing the pizza aside. "Gimme that, it just needs a little persuasion."

As the rabbit watched, mystified, Sonic stood by the offending piece of technology with the antenna held up before him like a warrior of ancient times worshipping before a mystical altar.

"Sky Pirate Adventures," he began solemnly. "Most Extreme Hoverboard Stunts. And-" he added the last in a reverent whisper, "_X Rated Horror Films._"

Then he dropped the antenna and brought his fist down on the top of the TV with a satisfying thud.

"Sonic-!"

"What? It worked, didn't it?" Sniggering, the hedgehog smugly pointed to the TV. The Metropolis Zone News shone back at them in full glorious colour.

Sonic began to prance around the room with the antenna on his head to resemble rabbit ears, his bottom lip tucked under his upper teeth, and an amused glow in his eyes. "But it's _impossible_, you'll never get a signal, oh the _negativity_ of it all…"

Something in the back of the TV went _pfft_ and the picture flickered and went blank.

"I think you broke it," Johnny remarked.

"…Bugger," said Sonic.

It rapidly became clear that the TV was now well and truly dead. Sonic sighed over this, but consoled himself with another slice of pizza and was quickly distracted by the cough and huff of an engine outside.

"Bus!" he exclaimed, and both Mobians hurried to the window.

Sonic's house was near a crossroads and Emerald Hill's one and only bus stop, which was just outside the village. The arrival of a bus was worth watching because it only happened once or twice a day and sometimes not at all; and since the bus came from outside the Zone it sometimes brought interesting visitors with news from other parts of the island.

The bus was just leaving, and a single person that Sonic and Johnny had never seen before had got off. He was a young pig, slightly stocky as pigs tended to be, and both bookish-looking and extremely nervous. Judging by how he struggled with his two fat suitcases he was also very unfit. This was not a good combination as he had picked exactly the wrong individual to help with his luggage- a certain greyhound, to whom such a person was simply an easy target.

Sonic grimaced, knowing that a bully could smell weakness a mile away and that this stranger might be in for a hard time.

Sure enough, Lance knew a nerd when he saw one. Like Sonic he was bored, but his way of eliminating that boredom was completely different: he saw it as his personal mission to show those weaker than him just how far down the food chain they really were.

The pig realised his mistake as soon as he asked the dog to help carry his suitcases. The toothy smile he'd been shown was mocking and had no warmth in it at all. He had seen enough of those smiles to know what they meant. And almost immediately he found himself on the wrong end of a hefty shove and landed on his backside in a six-inch deep puddle, one of his cases splashing next to him and the greyhound still holding the other as he smirked contemptuously down at him.

"Whoops! You really should be more careful." Lance glanced around as if making sure nobody was listening, then added in a conspiratorial whisper: "I think you've wet yourself."

His victim could only cower helplessly, letting grimy water soak into his clothes as Lance laughed cruelly and began to rifle through the contents of the suitcase. "What's this? Physics?" he held up a large book, and then tossed it into the puddle. The pig winced but said nothing, knowing it was better to keep his mouth shut. "And… Engineering?" a second book followed the first. "Little brainbox are we? Well, little piggy, maybe you _should _have stayed home…"

"What the hell is your problem, Lance?" someone said disgustedly. The greyhound looked up to see Sonic glaring angrily at him, while the rabbit he always hung about with was helping the spluttering pig out of the puddle. Soaked, he stared around with terrified eyes, unsure whether these two strangers were going to help or start picking on him too.

"Um? You don't have to…"

"See?" Lance sneered. "He doesn't want help and this is none of your business, so clear off. Me and Piggy were just making friends, weren't we?" He gave another cruel smile.

"Um," the pig stammered.

"Some friends." Sonic wrinkled his snout in distaste. The pig was trying his hardest to be invisible and redoubled his efforts when Sonic shot him a look that was part accusation and part pity. The hedgehog glanced at the scattered contents of the suitcase then looked away.

"Did you get bored with picking on me," he asked the greyhound evenly, "Or do you only bully people who can't fight back when your bodyguard isn't around?"

"As if I'd waste all of my time on _you._" Lance shook his head in disbelief. "I'm doing the guy a favour. He's not from around here- so it's my job to show him how this Zone works, sooner rather than later."

Sonic snorted, simmering anger rising in him. "Coward."

"What did you say!"

"You heard." Sonic turned his back on Lance- even to a non-hedgehog this was obviously an insult, as the dog found himself looking at a small forest of sharp spines- and started to gather up the pig's sodden things.

Lance did not take this at all well.

"No one turns their back on me, you mutated little runt."

Sonic was already in motion as Lance advanced on him. He despised bullies and thought what Lance needed was a good kick in the tail, but the pig's behaviour- accepting this treatment as if it was a normal fact of life- had _really_ incensed him. So the hedgehog did not think twice about what he did next.

The next thing Lance knew was that Sonic had whipped around to face him, there was a sharp pain across his shins and then an almighty splash as he landed facedown in the muddy water.

Trip-er and trip-ee froze for a long moment, staring at each other in mutual disbelief. Rivulets of water and mud dribbled down Lance's face, staining his coarse yellow-brown fur as he blinked in shock at finding his role reversed. Sonic bit back a derisive laugh and his eyes widened, a slight look of panic crossing his face as he realised what he had just done. With Lance there was a line you simply didn't cross. Sonic had not only crossed it, but had spat on it on the way over and was now several miles across the border and heading into Hospital Country.

The greyhound realised too. His own eyes narrowed to slits of fury and his lips drew back over his canine teeth. _Nobody _tripped Lance. That this little worm of a hedgehog gave as good as he got in terms of verbal abuse was bad enough. But to fight back physically- _twice_ if you counted the quill incident, which Lance was still not convinced had been an accident- well, that was something else.

The little fool needed to be taught some respect.

A threatening growl vibrated in the dog's throat, rising in pitch and volume.

And then all hell broke loose.

Johnny stood slack-jawed as Lance erupted out of the filthy puddle in a stream of equally filthy language and launched himself at Sonic; the hedgehog, a fraction his size, instinctively raised his quills in fear but stood his ground and bared his own sharp canines; then Johnny was violently jostled as the pig gave a squeal of terror and ran for his life.

"Sonic!" the dazed rabbit exclaimed helplessly, blinking at the ball of fur and fists rolling around on the ground. "Er…"

He dithered for a few moments, scooting round and attempting to break up the two combatants who were completely oblivious to his efforts, apart from glaring and jerking away whenever the rabbit grabbed an arm or tried to tug one away from the other. Hopping aside as the two rolled past near his feet, Johnny glanced around despairingly- and where the heck was the pig, anyway? No sign of him, but he bit his lip at the sight of another figure approaching in the distance- who paused as if trying to make out what the commotion over there was about.

Uh oh. Johnny knew that figure and it would probably be very good _and _very bad if they saw this...

...Again.

The rabbit sighed in resignation, gulped heavily, then began to wave to get the figure's attention.

…

Sonic saw the punch coming just in time to jerk himself out of its way, so that Lance's fist ploughed into the ground instead of his head and the dog howled more in anger than pain. Sonic was quick and agile, but in close quarters against an opponent who was bigger and stronger than him that didn't count for much. So he was reduced to dodging Lance's blows as much as possible and avoiding injury rather than actually fighting back, which was a lot harder than it sounded when those blows seemed to be coming from all directions.

The sensible thing would have been to escape- but being Sonic, this didn't even occur to him.

His feet slipped on the wet tiles of the road as he scrambled to avoid the snarling greyhound. His vision exploded in stars of pain as he caught a glancing blow to the jaw and suddenly Lance was on top of him, gripping the hedgehog's narrow shoulders and driving him down into the deepest pool of rainwater by the side of the road.

"Not so cocky now! Let's see how _you_ like it," the dog hissed, smirking as he saw Sonic's eyes widen in shock. He reflexively grabbed at the sinewy arms holding him down, but they might as well have been iron bars for all they moved.

It went against all a hedgehog's instincts to be forced onto his back- with his quills pressed uselessly into the thick mud in the bottom of the puddle, Sonic felt horribly vulnerable. That was not the worst of it though, because the water was already up around his ears and Lance was pushing him ever further into the muck.

_You can drown quite easily in just a few inches of water, you know, _whispered a malicious little voice in the back of his head. He felt something in there snap.

"_NO!" _Sonic cried out and curled his body upwards, slamming both feet solidly into the greyhound's chest.

Lance's breath was expelled in a grunt of pain and surprise at the unexpected strength of the kick. Losing his balance, he released the hedgehog and stumbled back a few steps, only to go down in a splash of water as Sonic surged to his feet with a wordless yell of fury and rammed him in the stomach.

For a few moments Sonic appeared to have the upper hand- winded and gasping, Lance could do little more than shield his face from the enraged teenager's punches, which although not all that powerful rained down on him too swiftly to avoid. But the older mammal rallied quickly and within a few breaths had launched himself at Sonic again, his anger only growing stronger as the hedgehog refused to give in.

They rolled on the ground, oblivious to the muddy puddles or anything much else apart from each other. Lance's teeth were bared and the fur stood up in a stiff ridge along his back; Sonic's spines were raised in a similar reflex and his head lowered to expose as many of them as possible to his opponent.

"What in Chaos is going on here!" a new voice shouted, sounding almost as angry as Sonic felt.

The fighting Mobians froze at the authority in that voice. Sonic blinked, slowly becoming aware of his surroundings.

He and Lance were caught in a kind of stalemate. The greyhound's arm was around Sonic's neck, trying to restrain or choke him; this was rather like trying to choke a cactus as the hedgehog's quills had ended up sticking in much of Lance's chest and upper arm. Neither dog nor hedgehog could move without the one getting several impromptu piercings or the other having his air supply cut off.

Both of them were breathing hard from exertion; Lance panted with his tongue hanging out of his long muzzle, and Sonic was huffing through his nose, mainly because his sharp teeth were buried in the muscle of Lance's arm.

The scene might have been comical if not for the stern expression of the large adult rabbit who had just arrived. Darker-furred and more stocky than his son, Johnny Lightfoot's father had the same easygoing nature but was not a rabbit you wanted to be on the wrong side of in an argument. He took in the situation- each teenager was too wary to let go of the other (it just _had_ to be those two, didn't it), and the mud-splattered contents of a suitcase were littered around them.

The rabbit gave a world-weary sigh.

"I'm going to assume you two have a good explanation for this, although, knowing you I doubt it."

Sonic mumbled something unintelligible.

"Try taking his arm out of your mouth first, Sonic." Jonathan Lightfoot Senior had a noticeable hint of resignation in his voice.

Sonic did so and said the first thing that came to mind: "This inbred flea farm tried to _drown _me."

Lance, wincing, retorted with the favourite excuse of teenagers everywhere when faced with an angry adult: "He started it."

"I was provoked!"

"I don't _care_ who started it," Mr Lightfoot interrupted. "You, and you, let go of each other. _Now._"

Under the watchful eye of the rabbit, they disentangled- carefully- all the while grumbling and glaring at each other. Both were soaked and had mud driven deeply into their fur. Lance bore scratches and punctures from Sonic's spines, not to mention the bite mark, but fortunately for him it had not broken the skin. Sonic had several more bruises to add to his growing collection. The hedgehog wiped his mouth disgustedly with the back of his hand. He'd cut the inside of his lip when the dog had punched him, and there was a trace of blood on the white glove.

He looked up and scowled at Johnny, who was hovering apologetically behind his father. "Thanks a lot, _pal_."

"Well what was I supposed to do? Leave you to get beaten up?"

"I was winning," the hedgehog sniffed.

Johnny suspected that Sonic's definition of 'winning' was very different to his own, but sighed out a 'sorry, Sonic' all the same.

"Don't you apologise to him!" Mr. Lightfoot reprimanded his son, then turned a hard stare on the grubby and mismatched pair in front of him. He knew them both and was well aware that Lance's 'popularity' among the other youngsters was as much to do with their fear of him and his large badger friend as with the greyhound's talent for athletics.

Sonic had lived in the Lightfoot family home for a while; he was one of his son's closest friends- although goodness knew why. He wasn't a _bad_ kid exactly, but he had a volatile temper that was quick to rouse. He may have been smaller and younger than Lance but the little hedgehog would take on anyone when he was angry enough.

The Lightfoot family was large and the rabbit was used to dealing with unruly teenagers. He assessed the situation quickly- rivals in speed, the one prone to bullying and the other to flying into a rage whenever his pride was insulted- yes, he thought, those two had always been an accident waiting to happen. The only thing he couldn't figure out was the scattered luggage.

"If you were any younger I'd ground both of you. I think I have a good idea what's been going on here, but…?" he trailed off enquiringly. The rabbit's tone of voice clearly stated that failure to respond would be a mistake.

"He tripped me up, sir," Lance began, narrowing his eyes at Sonic. The hedgehog sneered at his meek tone of voice. Lance could be the picture of politeness when he wanted.

"Oh, please…"

Mr Lightfoot gave the hedgehog a searching look.

"Are you saying you _didn't_ lose your temper and trip him up after he insulted you, which is what I assume happened?" a pause, "And you can stop smirking, Lance. _You_ should have left him alone in the first place. Well, Sonic?"

As far as the rabbit was concerned, the blame rested firmly on the hedgehog. Lance was a known bully, yes, but whatever he had said to Sonic should not have provoked a physical attack. He had only witnessed the last seconds of the fight and Sonic had seemed to be the aggressive one.

"Er, excuse me? It wasn't like that exactly… " A voice began hesitantly.

Sonic blinked in surprise at the return of the pig. He had not expected him to come back, not when there were still people around anyway.

"And who are you?" Mr Lightfoot frowned slightly, not recognising the young Mobian hovering anxiously around the edge of the group. Pigs tended to go around fully clothed because of their furless pink skin; this one wore a T-shirt with a scientific formula printed on it and jeans, which were soaked with dirty rainwater from the waist down.

"I'm O… um, Porker. Porker Lewis. Those are my suitcases, what's left of them anyway," he nodded at the cases, one of which was lying half-in a puddle and the other, which was open, had had its contents scattered over the ground during the fight.

"Ah, the owner of the mysterious luggage." The rabbit nodded, trying to put him at ease. "So can you tell me what happened, Porker?"

Porker stared at Lance in trepidation for a couple of seconds and gulped. Then the whole story burst out of him.

"I'd just got off the bus- looking for somewhere to stay, you see- and the one over there, the dog-" he hesitated, because Lance was snarling dangerously, "He pushed me over and started throwing my books into the water. Then the hedgehog and the rabbit turned up and tried to stop him. That's why they were fighting; they were helping me."

Mr Lightfoot blinked at this unexpected development.

"Son, is this true? You and Sonic were defending Lewis here?"

Johnny nodded and explained the situation further to his father.

"He's making it all up, don't listen to-" Lance muttered, but was cut off by a snapped 'shut it, you' from Sonic and a glare from Johnny's father.

"Hm, well, I seem to have got something of a wrong impression," the older rabbit said after a while, ignoring Lance's protests as he gazed at Sonic thoughtfully. The hedgehog had the slightest hint of a triumphant glitter in his eyes. "_However,"_ he continued more firmly, "I'm sure this could have been solved without any violence."

He then spent several minutes lecturing Sonic about the need to show some restraint and keep his temper in check. Sonic, relieved that he was in less trouble than he thought, actually pretended to listen to this and even endured the looks Lance shot him when Mr Lightfoot's eyes were elsewhere, although he did tap his foot against the ground impatiently.

The rabbit's words to Lance were shorter but far more ominous:

"I think you, me, and your parents need to have a little chat."

Lance gave the three other youths a look of pure malice as he was led away, protesting that he was too old to be treated like this.

"Oh dear…" Porker muttered.

Sonic just smirked.

...

It took them a while to gather up all of Porker's things, by which time the clouds had retreated further, even the puddles seemed to have shrunk in size, and Johnny's hands were just as muddy as those of the other two.

"All my books are ruined," Porker said, gazing despondently at the two wet suitcases.

"They'll dry out," Johnny replied. The pig shook his head.

"It doesn't matter. Most of it's up here anyway," he tapped his temple with a finger, then sat down heavily on one of the damp suitcases. It wasn't as if his trousers could actually get any wetter.

Porker looked up at the hedgehog and rabbit with a puzzled expression. They were complete strangers, younger than him, and as far as he was concerned had just saved his life. In Porker's experience that simply didn't happen.

"Why did you stand up for me just now?" he asked, instantly regretting the question because that accusing look was on Sonic's face again.

"I had to. _You _didn't even try," he said harshly.

"Sonic, don't be like that-"

"No, he's right." Porker sighed. "I'm sorry. And I didn't mean to run away like that, I was just frightened…" The pig smiled sickly. "Oh dear… he's going to get me for this, isn't he? That Lance will knock me into the Special Zone the first chance he gets..."

"Not when my dad finishes with him, he won't. We would've been in trouble if you hadn't come back when you did," the rabbit said, looking pointedly at Sonic.

The hedgehog thought about it for a few moments. Johnny had a point, he agreed grudgingly.

"Yeah. Thanks, I guess… Porker, was it?"

He nodded. "I felt so guilty for running off like that. So I came back… I know there's not much I could have done to help, but I had to do _something_…"

Sonic eyed the pig, re-evaluating him. He had assumed Porker was simply a coward, but he had shown something- maybe not bravery, but certainly decency_- _in coming back to explain. Sonic's respect for him went up a notch.

"It's a good thing you did," he said after a moment, "'Cause otherwise Johnny's dad would have had me weeding his garden again."

"True," Johnny confirmed from long experience.

Porker managed a smile; he was a friendly Mobian when he wasn't being terrorized.

"Is your name _really_ Sonic?" he asked curiously.

"Is yours really Porker?" said the hedgehog. "Seriously, that _is_ weird." Porker looked nervous again for a second and went 'um', but Sonic didn't seem to notice and carried right on. "Yeah. That's Johnny, he's the quiet boring one. I'm Sonic, and I'm not."

Being used to this kind of thing, Johnny rolled his eyes and replied, "You're not what? Quiet or boring?"

"I dunno, pick one…" a smirk.

Porker sighed.

"I thought this was going to be a nice, quiet Zone. But from what I've seen so far it doesn't seem like one."

"It is a nice quiet Zone." Sonic's lips quirked in amusement. "It's so very nice and so very quiet that I could probably die of boredom right now."

"Not everyone here is like Lance," Johnny added.

"Yeah," the hedgehog chimed in. "Put it this way: even a nice, quiet village like this needs an idiot."

Porker brightened a little and even grinned at this. The hedgehog had scared him a little earlier, but he seemed okay once you were talking to him rather than watching him throw punches at someone.

"So what brings you to the Emerald Hill Zone?" Johnny eventually asked. "You said you were looking for somewhere to stay. Are you here on holiday or something?" he glanced at the cases. Why a tourist would fill his luggage with books, he had no idea. And there seemed to be too much of it for the usual summer visitors.

Emerald Hill did have its share of tourists in the summer months, but the village had successfully resisted invasion by them. Mostly people came on day trips to enjoy the views and the beaches. Sometimes they camped out, but usually for no more than a few days. The main tourist destination on South Island was the Star Light Zone and that was some distance away. But it _was_ summer, so the most likely explanation was that the pig had come to explore the scenic Hill Zone.

But Porker was not a tourist. He explained that he was looking for work and somewhere to live. He was seventeen- and a very intelligent seventeen, as he claimed to have been at university for the past three years in some city neither Sonic nor Johnny had ever heard of, most likely somewhere distant since his accent was not one they recognised. The pig had a degree in science and engineering, and a talent for inventing things.

"What sort of things?" Johnny asked him as soon as he could get a word in. Porker proved to be an especially talkative pig; once he got going he was difficult to stop.

"Well… all kinds of things," He replied. "Anything technological, really. Computers, science equipment…"

"Heh, you won't find much of that around here," Sonic remarked.

Porker looked disappointed. "I was hoping to find a job here," he sighed. "I was told this was one of the most peaceful places on the island."

"It is," the hedgehog replied disgustedly. "Although why you'd want that is beyond me."

"Who wouldn't want peace and quiet?" Porker wondered. "Um, could you two do me a favour? I heard there was a house vacant around here, but I haven't got a clue where it is…"

Sonic and Johnny exchanged glances.

"Ah…" said the rabbit.

"What?"

"I think you're about a month late," Sonic clarified. "There was only one empty house in the village, and, well- sorry pal, but I'm living in it."

"Oh, dear…" Porker said, for the third time. "Er… isn't there a hotel, or…?"

Johnny shook his head apologetically. "The closest is in Green Hill."

Anyone who looked at Sonic at that point could have clearly seen the cogs turning in his brain. Suddenly his eyes lit up. "Hey, idea! You invent stuff, right Lewis?"

"Um… yes?"

"Does that mean you can fix stuff, too?"

The pig nodded. "Most electrical things…"

"Cool!" Sonic grinned hugely. _X-rated horror films, here I come!_ "Okay, here's how I see it: you need a place to sleep until you find somewhere permanent, right? And I have a TV that needs fixing. I _also _have a very comfy sofa…"

This was how the first three freedom fighters came together: purely by chance and completely unaware of the parts they would play in the years to come.

As the hedgehog outlined his idea to Porker, a breeze rippled the grass of Emerald Hill.

Sonic had been right. There was change in the air.


	3. Starlight

**Chapter 3**

.

…_Of course, I always knew it was only a matter of time before somebody found me out. Given my history it is strangely fitting that it was the hedgehog, and perhaps that was why I revealed myself so easily. I always was too sentimental for my own good…_

- From a torn scrap of notepaper found in Emerald Hill

.

'_Star claims your body, Emerald claims your soul.'_

- Mobian proverb

…

Sonic tossed aside the game pad with an accomplished sigh, then checked his watch.

"Clocked. Not bad, eh Johnny?"

The battle had raged for two hours and fourteen minutes exactly. It had been long and bloody, but now, finally, the Emeralds had been gathered and the zombies dispatched to the Frozen Hell From Whence They Came.

He had even got the girl. Okay, that girl had turned out to be none other than the Evil Zombie Queen herself, but that was not the point.

Sonic grinned expectantly across at his friend Johnny Lightfoot. The grey rabbit managed to hold out for a few moments, but Sonic's stare and smug expression eventually won, as usual.

"Okay, okay. You're good."

Ego satisfied, the hedgehog stood, stretched skinny arms towards the ceiling, and then turned off the game console with a flourish.

"What, no applause? I'm hurt." He tutted, ignoring Johnny's eye-roll and waving a hand at the now-dark TV screen. "Nice twist at the end, huh?"

"If you say so," Johnny replied with much less enthusiasm. _Killer Zombie Penguins _were not his idea of quality entertainment, and they had taken up most of the day in one form or another- starting with the movie and its string of increasingly low-budget sequels, and finishing with a marathon session of the spin-off video game.

Sonic seemed to find the over-the-top, unconvincing horror highly amusing. Johnny just thought it was laughable.

"C'mon, Johnny, where's your sense of fun?" Sonic said to the rabbit, who was trying unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn. He'd had more than his fill of undead birds for one evening, although he had to admit he was mildly impressed by anything that could make Sonic sit still for a few hours. That was no mean feat at the best of times.

Johnny glanced at the window and saw that it was almost dark outside. It was late. Or early, depending on your point of view. As if to emphasise this fact, there was a soft snore from the sofa's other occupant.

"He actually fell asleep?" wondered a smirking Sonic.

"No thanks to you and your Zombie Penguins. No, don't poke him…"

"I'm not," the hedgehog fibbed as he hastily withdrew his poking finger. "I'm just surprised," he added with a snigger, "he nearly went through the ceiling during that last film."

Porker Lewis was asleep sitting up, his head lolling back against the sofa. The pig liked horror films even less than Johnny did and the wobbly special effects had not stopped him from being scared silly; he had spent most of the evening jumping out of his seat every two minutes, even in the parts where you could see the strings (which Sonic unfailingly pointed out with a laugh and some sarcastic comment about movie awards).

Apparently, though, the 8-bit pixellated violence of the Mega System game had been easier for Porker to handle, and his tiredness had eventually had its way. The pig was evidently not at all used to late-night film and video game marathons.

Well, that would have to change if he planned on staying at Sonic's house much longer, Johnny thought wryly. It had been almost a week since Porker had repaired Sonic's television and somehow boosted the signal in the process -Porker had tried to explain how, but neither Johnny or Sonic knew what any of those technical terms meant- so that the TV now received all four channels in perfect clarity, much to Sonic's delight and the envy of everyone who had heard his subsequent bragging. Since then Porker's skills with machinery and electronics had been in high demand. By the time a piece of technology reached Emerald Hill it had passed through many hands and was usually both outdated and in need of repairs. Johnny suspected Porker would not be short of paid work, even if fixing defunct televisions and washing machines was not quite what he had expected to be doing. He seemed happy enough with the niche he had found for himself, though.

Sonic, on the other hand, showed more and more signs of boredom and frustration as the days since he had left school mounted up. He quite literally did not know what to do with himself. At least, Johnny mused, Porker had distracted him from that stone loop of his. For now at least.

The rabbit yawned again and ran a hand back over his long grey ears, which were starting to droop noticeably.

"Well, Porker's got the right idea. I'd better get home before I fall asleep myself…" He stood and began picking his way towards the door through the wreckage of today's fast food binge. Yesterday's mess was absent; Porker had proved to be an obsessively tidy pig and had insisted on getting rid of the worst of it 'before it evolved sentience'. This, Johnny thought, could only be a good thing as Sonic lacked any concept of clean and tidy. Especially since Porker had paid particular attention to removing the moulted hedgehog quills embedded in the sofa. Sonic barely seemed aware of them, but they could give anyone else a nasty surprise.

The spiny mammal in question was shaking his head and tutting as he followed him to the door.

"You wimp, Johnny! No stamina, that's your problem." He pointed at the leaning stack of video cassettes next to the sofa. "We haven't watched Part 7 yet. It has _aliens."_

Johnny guessed that the younger Mobian wasn't being serious- not entirely anyway. With Sonic it was never easy to tell.

"No way, Sonic. Some of us have to get up in the morning."

"It _is _the morning, almost," the hedgehog pointed out reasonably. Johnny sighed again.

"You know what I mean." He nodded at Porker, "I don't think he'd appreciate it much, anyway."

Sonic dismissively waved a gloved hand at the sleeping pig.

"He's comatose, he doesn't care." He shrugged, but didn't offer any serious argument. "I'll see ya tomorrow, then. Remember, _aliens."_

"Night, Sonic," the rabbit replied, hiding his amusement behind another yawn. Sonic was always the first to scoff at the idea of aliens, or ghosts, or anything supernatural whatsoever. But if there were rumours of a haunted cave, he was also the one who insisted on spending the night there, and if a legend warned not to do something, he simply _had _to do it. And then of course there were the horror films. There was no point wondering whether Sonic was more open-minded than he liked to let on, or if his thrill-seeking was the result of sheer boredom- sometimes, he knew from experience, the hedgehog defied understanding.

Sonic hesitated in the doorway as Johnny began to make his way down the street towards home. It was not out of concern- the village had never given anyone cause to worry about their safety after dark, even though it was lit only by the occasional lamp and the windows of a few houses whose occupants were still awake- but because of restlessness. Sonic shifted from one foot to the other. All that sitting around, not to mention the sugary junkfood he'd been stuffing himself with all night had made him twitchy; he didn't want to sleep, he wanted to _do_ something.

The mild evening breeze pushed his ears backwards and rustled his quills against one another. For some reason his eyes were drawn to the road leading out of the village and into the countryside beyond, and then upwards to where the black silhouettes of hills met the sky. There were no clouds tonight, and two pale crescents of moon hovered just above the hills like half-lidded eyes. Because the days were long at this time of year it was not completely dark yet; overhead the sky was indigo, nearly black, but on the horizon it was still a deep, glowing blue.

The young hedgehog grinned to himself. This was too perfect a night to waste on sleeping; he'd go for a run instead to burn off some of that excess energy. Sunshine may be better for running, he thought, but there was something special about this time of night. The dark yet luminous colour of the sky would not last more than an hour or so and only offered a few hints of the brilliant display of stars that would come later. But as far as Sonic was concerned the rapidly changing twilight was even better _because _it didn't reveal everything. There were things to be discovered out there, it said.

A tingle of excitement passed through him, the same sense of impending change that he had felt at the stone loop on the last day of school.

That was when he saw the flash of light in the distance.

...

"Johnny! Hey! Come look at this!"

Fortunately the rabbit was not yet out of earshot. Unfortunately neither was half the village; one particularly grumpy individual threw open an upstairs window and demanded sleepily that 'the damn kid' be quiet, before slamming it loudly enough to wake up as many people as Sonic's insistent shouting had in the first place. Everyone else either ignored the commotion or, like Porker, remained obliviously snoring.

Johnny hurried back, more to shut the hedgehog up than anything else.

"What?" the rabbit hissed under his breath.

Sonic was gazing towards a distant hill that was visible between two buildings on the outskirts of the village.

"That," he pointed. "What _is_ that…?"

Johnny looked, then frowned. At the very top of the hill a small point of golden light flickered on and off irregularly. It was nothing spectacular- in fact he was surprised Sonic had noticed it at all.

"Someone with a torch?" he ventured. "People _do _go out at night-"

Sonic shook his head impatiently.

"It's not a torch, it's the wrong colour. That's something else."

"A campfire then. There's nothing up there but grass and trees and-"

"Grass and trees and the _Star Post_," Sonic finished, glancing up at him. The hedgehog's eyes looked black in the darkness but still appeared to gleam in a way Johnny had learned to dread- it usually meant his excitable friend had an Idea and was about to get himself in trouble again.

Johnny was also mildly surprised. He'd thought Sonic had lost interest in the Star Post a long time ago, after spending a night in its shadow had not resulted in him being cursed with bad luck, struck by lightning or vanishing altogether as the legends said he was supposed to.

"Sonic…"

"Don't _Sonic _me," he grinned. "I'm gonna check it out, whatever it is. C'mon!"

"No way, it's late enough as it is-"

Sonic tapped his foot impatiently. He was not superstitious, but he somehow knew that flashing light was nothing as mundane as a campfire, in the same way he often seemed to know when there were gold rings nearby. He was a hedgehog who trusted his instincts.

Sonic darted behind the tall rabbit and shoved.

"Come _on_."

Johnny sighed. There was no understanding Sonic. And sometimes no arguing with him, either.

...

Sonic knew as much about Star Posts as most people, which was hardly anything.

Star Posts were another of Mobius' mysteries, as ancient as the stone loops and just as unexplained. Many zones had at least one; Posts located some distance from towns and villages were simply accepted as part of the landscape despite the stories of strange disappearances that surrounded them. They were generally left alone because of those same legends and had often survived intact to the present day. Those too close to Mobian habitation had not been so lucky.

Emerald Hill's Star Post was just far enough away from the village to have been left standing, although the metallic base bore a few bright nicks and scratches where daring children had tried to carve their initials into it. It stood among a scatter of coconut trees on top of an otherwise unremarkable hill, and at twelve feet tall was average in size. Otherwise it was near-identical to every other Star Post. The strange, silvery metal it was made of refused to rust and only a slight coating of tarnish hinted at the centuries it had stood there. It resembled a common lamp post, except for being topped by a fat metal disc instead of a lamp.

Of course, all that Sonic could see as he climbed the Star Post's hill was the silhouette of its top half and the vague outline of one of the two yellow stars that adorned the disc. He wasn't worried about the Post making him vanish. Once he had been fascinated by the Star Post because he had been warned not to go near it- it was the lure of the unknown that had appealed to him more than any particular legend, the excitement of breaking the rules and the possibility that something amazing would happen if he did. Nothing had, of course, so he had dismissed the legends as nonsense.

Now he felt a trace of that old excitement again. It wasn't quite fear- even if the flashing light had been something to do with the Star Post, there was no way he'd let it make _him_ disappear. No stationary metal pole was going to outrun Sonic the hedgehog.

He smirked at the thought, his eyes fixed on the tall beacon on top of the hill.

Sonic had seen the Star Post a hundred times before, but at first he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong with the scene in front of him. The brown hedgehog paused, panting slightly from his run. With a confused frown, he turned to ask Johnny what he thought- but the rabbit wasn't there.

Sonic looked back over his shoulder. The Emerald Hill Zone took on a whole different character at night, the shifting blue twilight rendering familiar objects mysterious and alien without obscuring them completely. The disused path he had been following was a thin black thread; trees and log bridges sat in pools of shadow, and dark smudges marked the position of bushes, rocks and other smaller objects.

Any one of those shadows could have been Johnny. It was too dark to run flat-out without the risk of breaking an ankle but Sonic had still managed to leave him behind somewhere.

He expelled a sigh of irritation, and then shrugged. Johnny would catch up eventually. With that thought he continued up the hill- he was not going to miss out on whatever was going on up there because his friend insisted on being too slow.

The Star Post was a black cutout shape, distinguishable only from the surrounding trees by its crisp edges and the softly glowing yellow star-

With a start, he suddenly realised what had been nagging at him. In this light the star-shaped panel should not have been visible at all.

Sonic's eyes widened.

_Is that what the light was?_

The glow was faint, like static clinging to a television screen after it had been turned off. It was fading as he watched.

But it was definitely there.

Did Star Posts usually glow in the dark?

He didn't think so- they didn't usually _do _anything, let alone glow- but he didn't get the chance to wonder about it any further. He was far enough up the hill now to see the Star Post's base.

There was something between him and the Post. Something that shouldn't have been there at all.

At first Sonic thought the dark shape was a large boulder. But then he remembered there were no rocks on this particular hill. And rocks did not tend to float. This one did, rising gently out of the grass to hover, impossibly, a few feet above the ground.

Startled, he froze in his tracks. With his attention focused on the floating thing, Sonic was only vaguely aware of the breeze shifting and his ears swivelling forwards to catch an odd humming sound: it was constant, low pitched and unnatural, like nothing he had heard before. The gust of wind smelled strange and unpleasant.

Sonic grimaced unconsciously at the smell, wrinkling his nose. In years to come he would get to know the scent of hot metal and machine oil very well indeed, but for now it was just as foreign to him as the eerie sound.

For a few moments the teenager was merely puzzled; then what he was seeing registered and he realised that standing in full view might not be a good idea. Sonic quickly ducked behind the nearest coconut tree and peered around the trunk.

He was not hiding, he assured himself. He was merely assessing the situation.

The object, aircraft, _thing_- Sonic could not find a word to describe it that fit, his experience of vehicles being mostly limited to carts and bicycles and the Hill Zone bus service- was hemispherical, like a flying bowl. Although it flew, it could not be a plane; there were a few small protrusions on the surface but Sonic could see nothing that resembled wings. If they were there they were impossibly stubby. A light on its rounded underside painted a small circle of grass orange, and going by the gleam reflecting from the base of the Star Post there had to be a second, white light on the side of the craft facing away from him.

Sonic knew that anti-gravity vehicles existed, but what on Mobius was something this high-tech doing in a middle of nowhere Zone like Emerald Hill?

But as exotic as the floating thing was, it was nowhere near as strange as the figure sitting in it.

Sonic blinked and strained his eyes, trying to make out more details of the creature against the rapidly darkening sky. Perhaps it was the light, but the silhouette seemed… wrong. Its head was a strange shape- like an upside-down apteryx egg and almost as smooth. There was something that could have been ears or hair, but no sign of a snout, even when the head turned. Long, thin, spindly arms were withdrawing some object- a large square thing, a box or container of some kind- from inside the bowl. The slender limbs cradled it protectively.

The creature didn't look like any species of Mobian Sonic had ever seen, or even heard of.

He remembered his words from earlier: _We haven't watched Part 7 yet. It has _aliens.

No way, Sonic thought, shaking his head in wonder. Aliens don't exist.

But if not, then what was floating in front of him?

He hesitated, wondering whether or not to step out of concealment and confront the… the whatever it was. That would be the most direct way to find out what was going on, and Sonic liked to be direct- it wasn't like him to be so unsure of what to do. But this strange scene beneath a glowing Star Post was like nothing he had experienced before. He had a sense that whatever was going on, it was not something he was meant to see. How would this person or thing respond to discovering they had an eavesdropper?

Sonic didn't have to wrestle with the problem for long. The decision to stay hidden behind the tree or reveal himself was suddenly taken out of his hands.

The figure opened the box.

Curls of vapour spilled over the sides of the container, filled with brilliant blue light. It was not a cold blue; this was the fierce colour of a gas flame or electric spark, like the sky near the horizon but somehow- _more_.

Sonic inhaled sharply. In an instant the mystery of the glowing Star Post and the possible alien didn't matter nearly as much as finding out what was in that box. The air was suddenly as charged and heavy as if a storm was coming. All his spines stood up of their own accord, and he felt an answering buzz of energy somewhere deep in his chest like the echo of what he felt when he absorbed a gold ring.

The light called to him, drawing him forward.

Maybe it was Sonic's gasp or a piece of coconut shell cracking beneath his foot that gave him away. It wasn't until the box snapped shut, cutting off the magnetic power of whatever was inside that he became aware of what he was doing, that his legs seemed to have walked him out into the open and up to the vehicle all by themselves.

The figure had frozen like a statue. The indistinct oval of its face was staring straight at him.

"-What?" The hedgehog blinked in total confusion as the craft spun around to face him. He stumbled backwards and quickly threw up a hand to shield his eyes, but was not fast enough to avoid being half-blinded by the intense beam of its single circular headlight.

Hedgehog and creature stared helplessly at each other. Sonic squinted into the glare through splayed fingers, every quill standing to attention. He felt the first stab of real fear- what was the creature going to do? Should he stand his ground or run?

Indecision rooted his feet to the ground and his thoughts came to a shuddering halt.

"…Oh dear," said the creature.

The floating thing's humming abruptly increased in pitch. An instant later Sonic was knocked off his feet by a rush of warm air, thick with that unidentifiable metallic smell.

Stunned, Sonic raised himself on his elbows. There were huge green splotches dancing before his eyes; he blinked hard in an attempt to clear his vision and get his eyes to re-adapt to the darkness.

The blinding light was simply gone, along with the vehicle and its occupant.

Sonic cast his eyes around for any sign of the car or aircraft or _whatever _that thing had been.

Was that the glow of a headlight disappearing into the distance…?

He scrambled to his feet and started towards the far-off glimmer, but it was already gone by the time he had taken three strides; he couldn't be sure it had even been the same headlight.

_The thing was so fast! _Sonic lurched to a stop with an awestruck look on his face, eyes scanning the horizon.

Nothing.

The hedgehog turned a full circle and took in as much of the hilltop as the failing light would allow.

Nothing.

For a while Sonic stood in expectant silence. What if the thing came back…?

He felt an odd mixture of relief and disappointment after a few minutes passed without any sign of the craft. A glance upwards told him that even the Star Post had stopped glowing, and although his heart was pounding as if he had been sprinting there was otherwise no sign that anything out of the ordinary had happened at all.

But that didn't stop the young hedgehog's face from splitting into a wide, adrenaline-fuelled grin. His sudden, uncontrolled bark of laughter surprised even him.

...

When Johnny came panting over the crest of the hill a short time later, Sonic berated him - albeit teasingly- for taking so long, then rattled off his story at machine-gun speed, punctuating it with quick, agitated gestures. Johnny had to make him repeat himself twice before he could make sense of what the hedgehog was saying.

When he finished, Johnny was no less mystified than he had been before.

"You're telling me you didn't see _anything?_" Sonic exclaimed.

Johnny's reply was guarded as he eyed his friend worriedly. "I think I saw some more lights…"

Sonic's grin flashed white in the darkness, the same kind of crazy grin Johnny had seen far too many times for comfort. Last time Sonic had had that look on his face it had ended badly- the hedgehog ended up lost in the caves that riddled the Zone for a day and a half, all because he had wanted to test out the theory that Emerald Hill was not named for the river that meandered through it, but because the mythical Chaos Emeralds were buried somewhere beneath the Zone.

What Johnny had not been prepared for this time was that wild story about the UFO. Sonic had been known to listen to those rumours that were passed around sometimes, the sightings of monsters and chao and islands in the sky. He would laugh, and then go and check it out for himself. He'd find nothing and laugh some more. But to actually make up one of those stories himself… _That _wasn't like Sonic at all.

"Are you okay?" Johnny frowned.

Sonic narrowed his eyes at the implication in the older teen's voice.

"I am _not _imagining things, Johnny!" he circled the Star Post, scuffing at the ground with his foot in search of some shred of evidence. "I know it's hard to believe, but I saw it. You saw the light too! It was the Star Post. It was _glowing._" Sonic tapped it with a gloved fist. The metal made a muted _ding_, a soft bell-like chime, but otherwise stood still and unresponsive. He described the flying ship again, and its occupant who was almost too strange to be Mobian. He trailed off with an involuntary shiver as he got to the part about the object in the box. Whatever that thing had been, it had felt… powerful. Even if he never learned what had really happened here tonight, he had to find out what had created that mesmerising blue light.

Sonic's emotions were a confused whirlwind. It was disturbing, the way the azure brightness had tugged at him. And when that creature had spotted him… anything could have happened. Yet for some reason he couldn't stop grinning at the memory. Was it because something incredible had finally happened, something he couldn't begin to explain, after years of futile daydreaming? Or because he had faced the fear of an unknown danger and emerged unharmed?

Whatever the reason, every inch of him buzzed with a feeling like the electric thrill he got from running, or the sense of triumph when he achieved something everybody else thought was impossible. But this was stronger, as if he was somehow more alive than he had been before.

"I'm just saying that it's really late, and maybe…" Johnny began. Sonic took no notice. Normally he would have been angry that his closest friend apparently didn't believe a word he was saying, but he was too caught up in this new feeling to be more than mildly annoyed.

The hedgehog continued to toe the debris of leaves and bits of coconut that had ended up against the base of the Star Post. Maybe the alien, or whatever it was, had dropped something that would prove his story.

Sonic's worn shoe shifted a few pieces of dead leaf, and the last of the light gleamed dully off something that was definitely not another piece of coconut.

"Ha!" his hand darted in to grab the object, which was about the size of his palm. He held it up for Johnny to see. "If I'm imagining things, then what's this?"

Johnny squinted into the gloom. The object was glossy and disc-shaped, a flattened spiral with a pattern of fine ridges over the surface.

"It's a seashell…"

Sonic glanced at it.

"Well, okay. But the sea is three miles away, so how'd it get here?" he countered, with a little less enthusiasm than before. Looking at it properly for the first time, he saw that what he found was indeed an ordinary seashell. The inside was packed with earth or sand, and a crack had worked its way around the spiral from the lip inwards. He'd found fragments of similar shells himself on Emerald Hill's rocky beaches.

Sonic had even kept some of the better ones. They were still gathering dust on a shelf in his house somewhere. This one was cracked but whole, which was unusual, and appeared to be a little darker in colour than the ones he had seen before- but other than that the shell was not particularly interesting. Definitely not the space ship part or alien artefact he had been hoping for.

"Sonic, anyone could have dropped that. It might not have anything to do with what you saw…"

"But I did see _something_," the hedgehog insisted stubbornly.

"So did I, and it looked like a headlight. It's dark- I think you might have seen someone in a hovercar, like the ones they have in the city. It was probably just a tourist…"

Sonic sceptically quirked an eyebrow. "Here? At this time of night? Yeah, right."

"…Seeing if the myths about Star Posts are true, like somebody else I know," Johnny concluded with a smile. "Actually you probably scared the fur off them, sneaking up like that."

Now that his adrenaline rush was starting to wear off, Sonic had to consider it. He had been watching horror films all night; _could _he have mistaken a hovercar for something else? Having never seen a hovercar in real life, he supposed he might have, especially if the driver had been wearing a crash helmet that changed the shape of their head. Maybe the Star Post's 'glow' was nothing more than the reflection from a torch or headlight…

Sonic was becoming more and more dissatisfied with the pace of village life. He knew he had been losing his temper more often lately, and worse, although he hated to admit it his speed was beginning to plateau. He was starting to feel like a fizzing ball of pent-up energy without an outlet.

From the concerned look on Johnny's face they were both wondering the same thing- was he so desperate for something to break the tedium of Emerald Hill that his mind had twisted a chance encounter with a passing tourist into some kind of adventure?

"Maybe…" he said, replying to the unspoken question in both their minds.

But he couldn't get the image of blue-tinted steam spilling from a sturdy metal box out of his head. Nor did he drop the spiral shell. He ran his thumb over it thoughtfully as they headed back to the village, feeling the ridges on the surface through his glove.

Maybe…


	4. X marks the spot

**Chapter 4**

.

Market day was the highlight of the week in Emerald Hill. The widest part of the main road had been taken over by dozens of colourful stalls, selling everything from fruit to furniture. People from the village and from surrounding Zones, some even more obscure than Emerald Hill itself, had come to spend the warm summer morning shopping- and more importantly, socialising.

Porker Lewis had lived in cities his whole life and had never seen anything like it before. The stalls and carts of the traders were wood and canvas with hardly any metal in evidence. They were festooned with colourful flags and banners- predominantly orange and yellow, although some stalls sported different combinations of colours. It gave the street a lively, carnival atmosphere that was heightened by the scents of many different foods and spices hanging in the air. Shoppers did not jostle and hurry to get from place to place as they did in the city; here they wandered seemingly aimlessly, flowing around the little knots of people who had stopped to chat.

As they headed for the cluster of stalls and the crowd of cheerfully gossiping Mobians milling around them, Johnny explained to Porker that the colours of the stalls represented their Zone of origin. Many Hill Zones on South Island had the same traditional checkerboard tiles on every available surface, but in each Zone the tiles had their own distinctive colour scheme. So Emerald Hill traders decorated their stalls in orange and yellow, those from Green Hill in orange and brown. Dust Hill was different in that it had no tiles, so instead used the green and purple shades of the crystals mined from the caves beneath the Zone.

As well as simply wanting to see the market, Porker had a shopping list of clothes and other items that had been ruined when his suitcases were soaked, which he needed to replace. Sonic also had an errand of his own to take care of.

Last night's scene on the Star Post hill now seemed unreal, almost dreamlike. Sonic could almost believe that he _had _imagined some if not all of it.

But then there had been Porker's odd reaction to the story. He hadn't been as sceptical as Johnny; in fact he'd been frightened. Sonic could have put that down to too many horror films and the pig's timid personality, but he seemed to know more than most about Star Posts. It was the Post, not the alien, that scared him.

Granted, most of the theories Porker had blurted at him- Sonic had learned very quickly that Porker spewed technobabble when he was nervous- went right over his head. There was something about Star Posts being a kind of technology that was too advanced to comprehend. Sonic tuned that out, which was his natural reaction to anything technical and boring. What he _did _pick up from Porker's ramblings was that the pig thought Star Posts were some form of ancient transport network, gateways to… somewhere else. Although how they worked was a mystery even to him.

Sonic had been reminded of a rumour he had once heard, that somewhere on the outskirts of Starlight City or maybe Metropolis – if indeed they had Star Posts there- somebody had tried to dismantle one to see what was inside. There was an explosion, and neither the Star Post nor the hapless Mobian were ever seen again. At the time he thought it was just another cautionary tale. Curiosity killed the whatever.

He had wondered aloud whether there was any truth to the story. What had really happened to that unfortunate person?

"You don't want to know," Porker had replied, becoming uncharacteristically silent.

What Porker had said about Star Posts being transportation devices got the hedgehog thinking. If a Star Post could make a person disappear, where did they disappear to?

And could they come _back? _Could something come through from the other side, something riding in a hemispherical spacecraft perhaps?

Sonic still had the seashell. That morning he took it out and examined it.

In the daylight he could see the shell's colouring more clearly. Something about it seemed odd; perhaps it _was_ different to the other ones he had found. He had rummaged though the accumulated junk- how had he managed to fill the house with so much _stuff _in a month, anyway- until he found the handful of large fragments among some other bits and pieces in half a coconut shell he had picked up somewhere. Sonic couldn't even remember why he had kept that.

At the time he had shrugged; at least it had kept the seashells safe.

Sonic could immediately see that he had been right. The shells were different.

The fragments from the Emerald Hill beach were off-white with a tiger-like pattern of yellow stripes that roughly followed the ridges on the shell. It was the pattern that had appealed to him in the first place.

The new shell from the hill had similar stripes on the centre whorls, although they were darker: brownish red on a cream background. But something strange happened as his eyes followed the spiral outwards. The neat stripes gradually broke up, forming first spots and random splashes, and then intricate swirls that almost looked as if they had been painted on and hurt his eyes if he tried to follow them for too long. The colour gradually intensified from brown and cream to an unnatural looking scarlet and gold. Greyish spots appeared around the edge, brightening to electric blue towards the lip of the shell. And the precise rows of ridges broke up into separate small bumps that at their most extreme resembled the beginnings of spines.

It looked weird to Sonic. Alien flying thing weird. Not that he usually spent his time staring at seashells, or knew much about them.

But he did know someone who might. Which was why the shell was tucked safely inside his left glove as he walked towards the market beside Johnny and Porker.

The three chatted amiably as they walked. Johnny shook his head, smiling amusedly as he glanced across at Porker Lewis, who was also shaking his- albeit in a slower and more thoughtful way.

"I'm not sure what effect, if any, the rings have. I'm not sure what you're thinking of is even physically possible," the pig was saying.

Johnny rolled his eyes. "You don't know how many times I've had this conversation," the rabbit commented. "He won't listen."

"Because I'm right and you know it." Sonic grinned. The young hedgehog was balancing on a low, narrow garden wall at the side of the road, placing him at the taller mammals' eye level. He held his arms out slightly for stability as he walked, enjoying not having to look _up _to speak to them.

"Well… you _are _very fast. And it's interesting how you absorb those rings, I've never seen anything like that before-" the pig eyed Sonic with the curiosity of a scientist, and was rewarded with a yet broader grin.

"…Yeah?"

"It helps if you _don't _feed his ego," the rabbit said in a stage whisper. "It's big enough already."

Posing with his nose pointed slightly upwards and chest puffed out, Sonic stuck out his tongue. "Shut up, Lightfoot. Wait until I run that loop and _then _try complaining about my ego." The hedgehog folded his arms and executed a quick turn on his heel so that he was now walking backwards.

"Showoff," Johnny observed.

"And he's not feeding my ego, he's stating facts," Sonic continued in a reasonable tone of voice.

The rabbit rolled his eyes.

Johnny had suggested spending a few hours at the stone loop after checking out the market. He still didn't like the thought of Sonic trying to run the loop, but had put the idea forward anyway to give the hedgehog something to do that would take his mind off what may or may not have happened at the Star Post.

What remained unspoken was that Sonic wasn't fooled for an instant, nor had he given up on the idea that he had seen something more than a Mobian in an expensive car. And they both knew it.

Still, Sonic agreed anyway. He hadn't had much chance to demonstrate his speed to Porker yet; he didn't get a new audience very often after all…

Still walking backwards, he smirked to himself. Maybe he would defeat that stubborn loop this time. No, he'd _definitely_ do it this time…

At which point he suddenly ran out of wall and toppled off the end with a surprised yelp.

Porker echoed it. Johnny, used to this kind of thing, merely sighed.

"You okay?"

"…Stupid wall."

...

Every child, Mobian and otherwise, knows that trailing after people as they shop is the most boring thing in the world.

Sonic couldn't agree more with this pearl of wisdom. After a while- a short, impatient while- he yawned hugely and wandered off on his own.

He glanced with little interest at the Acorns' clothing and shoe stall. There were clothes to fit the most common Mobian shapes and sizes, and a handwritten sign advertising a tailoring and shoemaking service for those who couldn't find the size they needed.

Although many Mobians wore clothes for warmth or fashion, Sonic had never really seen the point. Apart from the shoes and gloves that protected the sensitive pads of his feet and hands, he saw clothes as a nuisance; he was warm enough in his own fur, and clothing would only restrict his movement anyway. Besides, his spines would rip to shreds anything he tried to wear in no time.

Once, Emerald Hill Village's hairdresser- the only other hedgehog he knew, whose greying quills were more like wiry hairs and always tied up in a bun- had told him that hedgehogs with spines as sharp and stiff as his sometimes cut them in order to be able to wear clothes. Sonic had shuddered inwardly at the idea.

He'd rather keep his quills. As far as he was concerned he had too much built-in cool to care about fashion anyway.

In fact the only thing that caught his eye on the stall was a pair of red running shoes. He paused to stare. Sleek and streamlined, their polished leather made his own scruffy white ones look pathetic in comparison.

_You can't afford those and you know it, _he chided himself. The few coins tucked into the pocket of his glove cuff were not nearly enough, and although the soles of his old trainers were worn almost to smoothness there was still some life left in them yet. The bright red shoes displayed prominently at the front of the stall were the kind professional athletes wore. They would have been out of his league even if he _had_ needed new ones.

Still, he loitered for a few moments, wondering idly how much faster he'd be able to run wearing those…

"Are you going to _buy_ something or just stand there drooling over those shoes all day?" laughed the young red squirrel minding the stall. Sonic grinned back to cover his surprise. He hadn't even seen her.

"Hey, Sal. Watching the stall again huh?"

"Yep. My parents are busy telling Tuftee off for the tenth time, I don't doubt." Sally Acorn shrugged resignedly. Her little brother was always causing some form of mayhem, much like Sonic- except that Tuftee tended to blindly follow others into trouble rather than finding his own.

Sonic didn't know whether to laugh or grimace. He rolled his eyes.

"What's he done this time?"

"I don't know, and I don't think I want to." She sighed, flicking her tail irritatedly, and changed the subject. "This is the third week I've seen you staring at those trainers. Are you ever going to try them on?"

Sonic was tempted. Very tempted. But he shook his head and moved on after one last wistful look at the running shoes.

...

Emerald Hill was unusual in that its people were of many different species. In some older villages the population was dominated by just a few, but not here. The furred, feathered and scaled people making up the crowd were as mixed as in any of the larger cities.

Because he had spent most of his childhood being passed around various households, Sonic knew most of the villagers by sight and many by name. Some said hello as he moved through the bustling throng of shoppers. Joe the walrus waved from his seafood stall. A nine-year-old Sonic had spent a summer with Joe's family, being taught to fish. The fisherman was a nice guy, but it had still been the smelliest, wettest, most tedious few months of Sonic's life, not helped by the fact he could not bring himself to go anywhere in a _boat. _Let alone a leaky boat. The very thought of it made him go green beneath his fur.

Joe probably could have told him something about the seashell, but Sonic didn't want to risk being invited on another fishing trip. Or worse, offered swimming lessons again. If he had to ask the walrus it would be his last resort.

He bumped into the village doctor next; the grass snake shook her sleek olive head and tutted disapprovingly at the new graze on Sonic's elbow that he had got from falling off the wall. He hadn't even noticed it. Then there were a few members of the village council, older Mobians who invariably asked him when he was going to get a proper job and what he planned to do with his life now he was old enough to decide. Sonic didn't know.

He disentangled himself quickly from these encounters. He didn't have time to chat for long; he had something more important to do. He craned his neck in search of one particular trader.

He was beginning to think that Motley hadn't come this week- he didn't always set up his stall in Emerald Hill- when he spotted the gaudy wooden caravan standing out like a sore thumb amongst the other stalls.

Sonic grinned, immediately recognising it. Flags with the colours of many Zones fluttered from the top and sides of the caravan. It looked like the owner had specifically chosen them because they clashed with the brightly painted wood of the vehicle itself. The small purple apteryx that pulled the caravan was tethered behind it, fluffing its feathers and clucking sleepily to itself.

Motley had set out his goods on a long, low table. They were a random collection of objects- he called them 'historical relics,' while everyone else- including Sonic- called them 'junk.' But this was interesting junk, and each piece had a fascinating tale attached to it. Motley managed to turn the stories of how he obtained each item into a series of adventures. Whether there was actually any truth in them was another matter, but the stories were one of the reasons Sonic liked him.

Another was his knowledge. He claimed to know a little about everything, which was why Sonic had come to see him today. The hedgehog tightened his fingers around the strange-looking shell in his glove. If anyone could tell him where it might have come from it would be this guy.

The stallholder was already haggling with another customer- an immensely tall bird, probably from a neighbouring Zone, who Sonic had seen a few times before but never actually spoken to. Motley was also a bird, but a very different one; he was an Old Mobian magpie about the same size as Sonic himself. The black and white avian perched on a stool behind the table with a garish purple bandanna wrapped around his neck and his beak parted in a perpetual grin.

Motley's left eye was brown, but his right gleamed pale blue from the middle of a random splash of white feathers. He winked it at Sonic as soon as he spotted the approaching hedgehog.

"Aha! Another customer in search of amazing artefacts from exotic zones! I'd call them priceless, but everything here has a price…" the magpie's musical accent emphasised the first syllable of each word, a blend of many regional accents that made it impossible to tell where he was originally from.

Sonic raised an eyebrow. "And knowing you the price is sky high," he replied cheekily. "Hey, Motley. Got a question for you…"

The bird gave a laugh that would have reminded Sonic of a pneumatic drill had he known what one sounded like. "I know you've heard it all before, boyo. But it's part of the job, gotta make a living." He rustled his wings in a shrug. "I'll be right with you once I'm finished with the Doc here. You take a look around the stall. Got some new merchandise his week, great stuff, you'll love it." His long tail bobbed up and down in time with each sentence.

Sonic had to smile at the little magpie's infectious enthusiasm. He fought back his impatience and glanced at the curios for sale while he waited.

The heavier objects were arranged under the table, including a squat totem pole from Green Hill, carved from a tree stump. There was the bleached skull of some many-horned creature, and a large square block of sandy brown stone. A carving of a viciously fanged face was still just visible on the water-worn surface. Sonic couldn't begin to guess where Motley had found that, not to mention how he had managed to carry it.

On the table a selection of smaller bits and pieces was displayed. A thick leather-bound book with a row of seven bronze rings running down the spine. A small jade figurine of what looked like an earless hedgehog sat next to a huge spotted egg, which someone with too much time on their hands had pieced together from tiny fragments and mounted on a wooden stand. Old coins, which like all Mobian currency had holes through the middle- the legacy of an ancient and disastrous attempt to use gold rings as money- stood in leaning stacks. At one end of the table was a pile of bizarre little metal gadgets that Porker would have loved.

There was also a brass compass, scattered stones and crystals, and yes, seashells. But none looked remotely like the one clutched in his hand.

Although all the items roused his curiosity in some way, it was the fact Motley had travelled all over South Island to gather them that appealed to the hedgehog more than the objects themselves- Sonic had never been much further than the neighbouring Green Hill Zone. Many of the things for sale here had come from places he had never even heard of, let alone visited.

Listening to the magpie's tales of those distant Zones was not as good as seeing them himself, but it still made Sonic's world seem less small and dull.

He pawed through a box of old video games that Motley had laughingly labelled 'ancient relics' (although by Emerald Hill standards they were quite new), smiling to himself as he remembered how he used to pester the stall owner to take him on one of his trading runs. Maybe he would ask again one week. After all, the hedgehog mused, he was fourteen now and free of school. He didn't want to end up delivering pizza and newspapers forever.

Sometimes he imagined what it would be like to travel freely. More and more often lately his runs took him to the boundary of the Zone, where the Emerald Hill landscape began to merge almost imperceptibly with the rockier, more heavily populated Green Hill Zone. He would stand there and wonder- what if he just kept going and didn't look back? What was it that anchored him to Emerald Hill?

But he invariably turned away and returned to the village. He had no family, but his friends and his home were here.

Besides, he thought as he shifted the shell in his glove, now he had a mystery to solve.

"Now I haven't seen what you're looking for myself- more's the pity- or I'd be a rich magpie," Motley was saying to the other bird. The customer's abnormal height surprised Sonic every time he glanced up at him. Anything over five feet tall was unusual among Mobians, and this one had to be closer to six.

He was wearing the same strange clothing that he always did. All that could be seen of the bird himself was his long yellow beak; the rest of him was hidden beneath a heavy coat, hat, scarf and ski goggles. Judging by his height he had to be a stork or a heron, but why on Mobius was he dressed for a blizzard in a near-tropical Zone like this?

The hedgehog shook his head, amused. A stall like Motley's _would _attract a few eccentric types. Not that Sonic counted _himself_ as eccentric, obviously…

"But I have been asking around like you wanted. And, well, I wouldn't put too much faith in this, the guy who told me-" Motley glanced at Sonic, smirked knowingly and dropped his voice to a loud whisper, "-Let's just say he'd had a few too many." He winked again before continuing at normal volume. "Not that I make a habit of talking to drunks, Doc. But anyway. What he said was, his grandfather told him something had come down in Wood Zone. Something like what you're after."

"Wood Zone, hm?" Doc replied in a measured tone.

"Yep. And if it ever was there, it probably still is. What gets lost in Wood Zone stays lost, y'know. It's a jungle in there." Motley let off a machine-gun burst of laughter at his own joke.

Sonic, who was idly examining a thick plate of metal with a large letter G stencilled on it, unconsciously swivelled a pointed ear towards the conversation.

"Hey, you're gonna let me know if you do find the thing, right?" Motley's odd eyes sparkled avidly. "'Specially if you wanted to sell it. I could give you a good price for something like that, a very good price. For my own personal collection, you know…"

"I know how much you like your shiny things, Motley." Doc's beak barely moved, but his voice was patiently amused. "I wouldn't be selling it, though."

"A collector yourself, eh. Well, that I can understand." The magpie cocked his head to one side, calculatingly. "If you're into treasure, Doc, I've got just the thing for you. Something no self-respecting treasure hunter would be without."

The taller bird chuckled, shaking his head. Sonic could almost _hear _him roll his eyes.

"Not interested? I'm disappointed." Motley mock-pouted. "What a boring Zone this must be. Aren't there any true adventurers here? Doesn't anyone want to know what this special item is, this one-of-a-kind-antique, this essential piece of equipment for the intrepid treasure hunter?"

Sonic grinned. Even though he was familiar with Motley's sales patter, he couldn't resist.

"Go on then. What is it?" he raised a challenging eyebrow. "And it'd better be good, after all that."

Motley ignored the latter half of the comment, smugly fluffing his chest feathers and pointing at the hedgehog with a wingtip.

"Aha! I knew you had taste, boyo." Although the Old Mobian had no real hands, his wings with their independently mobile pinion feathers and stubby, clawed 'fingers' were almost as dextrous as they reached for a nondescript piece of age-browned cloth that Sonic hadn't even bothered to look at. It unfolded into a ten-inch square of fine material, frayed at the edges.

"The one thing every treasure hunter needs is a treasure _map."_ Motley held it up reverently for his two customers to see. "I got it from a bat up north. He was an odd one- a chimera, you know- wings _and _arms, lucky guy. Anyway, _he_ got it from a Sky Pirate. Or maybe he was one; he wasn't too clear on that. Charged me a fortune-"

"Motley. Get to the point," Sonic groaned.

"Oi, am I telling this story or not? Show some respect for your elders, will you?" the magpie grumbled- albeit through a smirk.

Sonic frowned at the map. The black outlines dyed into the fabric were clear enough, but it took him a moment to recognise the teardrop shape of South Island; Geography had been one of the few subjects he had paid any attention to in school and this was very different to the modern maps he was used to.

"It's wrong," he pointed out.

Motley shook his head adamantly.

"Didn't I say this was an antique? It's not wrong, it's _old._ Old and valuable. What you see here is South Island as it _was_, hundreds of years ago. Look." He hopped lightly onto the table and cleared a space with a talon, before spreading the map out flat so they could see it more closely.

The map was intricately detailed. The spine of mountains running down the centre, the circular bite out of the coastline and tiny sister island that made up Crater Bay, and the sharp, curved tip of South Island were immediately recognisable and much the same as they were today.

The Zones within that familiar outline were a different matter, however. It was this that had confused Sonic. Their boundaries were marked out with dashed lines, the Zones themselves dotted with indecipherable symbols and labelled in tiny curling script, except for a few towards the east which were marked 'Unknown.' There was even a little drawing of a dragon in one of the blank areas.

Some of the Zones, the hedgehog immediately noticed, were too big. He remembered seeing Meadow Zone drawn as a small blob no bigger than Emerald Hill, but on this map it was enormous. Others were too small; the Star Light Zone should have been three times that size. And some either had different names or weren't shown at all.

Sonic noted sourly that Emerald Hill was among those that didn't even get a mention. It had probably been nothing more than a corner of the Green Hill Zone when this map was made.

But most startling of all was that where modern maps showed a blank, grey area in the middle of the island, a vast city had been drawn in painstaking detail. Its name was surrounded by a decorative scroll.

"Genesis City…?" Sonic read, blinking incredulously. So the map _was _old. And suddenly much more interesting. He gave the magpie a wide-eyed stare. "Whoa. Motley, did you actually _follow _this map? You didn't go there, did you?" he asked eagerly. That would be some story. Everybody knew about Genopolis. The Lost Zone.

Motley shuddered visibly. "Me? Go to the ghost city? Not even _I'm _that brave, boyo. Or that stupid. Or that dead." He puffed out all his feathers as if the air had suddenly gone cold. But seeing Sonic's disappointed expression, he brightened again before the hedgehog could lose interest. "So, you can see why this map is so special," he continued as if nothing had happened. The magpie peered at Sonic and the heron through first his brown, then his blue eye. "You two know how this village was founded, right? …No?"

"No," Sonic confirmed disinterestedly. History was _not _a subject he had ever paid attention to.

The heron, however, was nodding.

"I've done my research, yes. But it's always good to hear it from a new perspective."

The magpie glowed. "Ah, so _someone _here appreciates their history! Well." He cleared his throat. "The story goes that centuries ago, that city was the capital of the whole island. It was vast, and I mean _huge_, with technology like you wouldn't believe. Millions of people, and spires reaching up to the sky, all tiled in sapphire blue." He made an expansive gesture with his wings. "They say it was the first city where Mobians of different races lived together, and that's why it was called Genesis. It was the greatest city on Mobius, and it just kept on growing and growing- until one day, _boom._"

Motley snapped his beak shut, pausing to let the tension build. He was getting into his tale now, and knew how to work up an audience.

"What happened?" said Sonic. Even though he'd heard this part before he was interested despite himself.

"I'm glad you asked, boyo. The answer is… nobody knows. Some say it was a comet. Others that the city was overrun by monsters, or that there was a earthquake and the whole place collapsed into the ground." His voice dropped to a whisper. "The entire city, destroyed overnight. Genocide City, they called it, and nobody's set foot there since. Apart from the _ghosts_."

"Oh, please…" Sonic snorted at the way Motley drew out that last word, not quite managing to keep the laugh out of his voice. The magpie ignored him.

"But not everyone died," he continued. "For the next few years, survivors came trickling out of the ruins. Some of them settled in Starlight City. Some crossed the channel to Theria, and founded the Metropolis Zone. And some," a wing feather jabbed downwards to point at the ground, "Ended up right _here. _They abandoned their technology and swore to take care of each other and give a home to any other survivor who made it down here. Been doing it ever since. And maybe," he concluded with a dramatic flourish, "They found their way here using _this very map_." He punctuated the final three words by tapping the map in question with a long black claw.

Sonic grinned slyly at him. "That very map, huh?"

"Yes, _this very map." _He tapped it again. "Didn't you hear me?"

"Didn't you say you bought it up north somewhere?"

"He's got you there," Doc commented with a dry chuckle.

Motley blinked, opening and shutting his beak a few times before recovering himself.

"Yeah, well… maps travel. It's what they're for."

Sonic's grin didn't budge an inch. "I thought you said it was a treasure map, anyway? I don't see anything that says 'x marks the spot' on there."

"Not that kind of treasure, is it?" the bird looked slightly miffed. "Look at the way the landscape has changed, here and here. There're things marked on this map that have been forgotten for _years_. Places nobody has been to in living memory. Just imagine what an intelligent explorer could discover by following this map…" his eyes narrowed shrewdly as he noted the hungry look on the hedgehog's face. "Oho, is somebody trying to knock my price down, I wonder?"

_Busted. _"Maybe," Sonic ventured, looking elsewhere.

Despite his attempts to remain casual, he wanted the map. It spoke to his sense of adventure. Motley was right; who knew what he could find using a map like that?

And what did all those little pictures mean? There were _lots_ of them around the future location of Emerald Hill. Did they mark the entrances to the caves? He couldn't remember exploring that many…

And then there was the city. The huge, haunted city. Of course he'd heard of Genocide, but still… how cool would it be to go there?

"I'm asking twenty Rings for this piece of history," Motley proposed.

Sonic's face dropped into a scowl as his happy bubble popped. He felt his glove pocket, which was anything but heavy with coins.

"I can afford ten," he replied, knowing full well that was only just barely true.

Motley eyed him understandingly, but his tone was now all business.

"Fifteen," he said.

"Do I look like I have fifteen Rings? Maybe if I saved for a month," the brown hedgehog muttered grumpily. "I'm still recovering from that TV you sold me."

"Sorry, Sonic, but that really is the best I can do. When I said the map cost me a fortune I wasn't kidding," he shrugged, genuinely sympathetic. "We've all gotta make a living, y'know."

"Tell me about it." Sonic eyed the map dejectedly as it was folded up and returned to its place on the table. "Maybe you can help me out with something else instead," he continued after a while. "Know anything about seashells?"

Doc, who had been about to leave, glanced up furtively. Suddenly he spotted something very interesting among the metal pieces at the end of the table.

Motley handled the shell with a combination of his clever wingtips, beak and talons, examining it from every angle.

The hedgehog watched impatiently until Motley looked up, head cocked to one side.

"Hmm. That's odd. Where did you say you found this?"

Sonic smirked. He couldn't help it; Motley was going to _love_ this.

"Under the Star Post."

The magpie's beak shut with an audible click. He stared at the shell as if it had suddenly transformed into something else entirely.

"The Star Post, eh…" he began thoughtfully, then the words began to rattle out of him again as if someone had hit the fast-forward button. "I know about Star Posts! But what were you doing there, boyo, don't you know they make people vanish? Did I ever tell you about the guy in the Star Light Zone that-"

"Yeah, you did." More amused than irritated, he reached across the table to tap the disc-shaped shell. "It's this I want to know about." Sonic didn't mention the UFO, or hovercar, or whatever it had been. He had to admit that in the light of day it all seemed a little… farfetched. Motley couldn't resist a good story but he couldn't resist spreading it either; if he told the magpie now, the whole village would know about it within five minutes. If someone like Lance found out he'd never live it down. Sonic had decided to learn as much as he could about the shell first.

"Well it's an ammonite, I can tell you that for a start," Motley began after a moment's thought. "People call them snake-shells, too, because that's what they look like. But it's really a type of mollusc. You probably already knew all that, right?"

Sonic hadn't, and shrugged noncommittally.

Motley's claw flipped the shell over. "The thing about ammonites is, they're everywhere. Common as feathers, anywhere there's seawater. You can't go to a single beach on the island and not find one. _But," _he added as Sonic made a disappointed face, "Know what the other thing about them is?"

"No idea," the hedgehog replied dryly, fighting the urge to tell the bird to hurry up and get on with it.

"Well." Motley puffed out his chest feathers in yet another dramatic pause.

"_Motley…" _Sonic finally cracked.

The magpie smirked around his beak and continued as if he hadn't heard him.

"The thing about ammonites, boyo, is that they come in different colours depending on where they're from. And _this," _He jabbed at it with a clawed foot, "This one here, isn't an Emerald Hill ammonite." As an afterthought he prodded at the shell's opening, dislodging a few particles of the black grit that was packed inside. "And that's not Emerald Hill sand, either."

Sonic broke into a grin.

"I knew it. So where's it from?"

Motley pondered for a moment.

"Can't say where precisely, boyo. Not an exact science. But the shell's dark and so is the sand in it, so probably somewhere north of here. Crater Bay maybe."

"Motley, this is Emerald Hill. _Everything _is north of here," the hedgehog pointed out, unimpressed. He frowned at the spiral patterning and vivid blue spots on the outer part of the shell. "But why's it all swirly like that? Is that normal?"

Motley shook his head. "Nope. But that isn't to say it's unusual. You see 'em with odd patterns like this sometimes. I've never found one this colourful, mind you, but it's not unheard of," a shrug. "Nobody knows _why_, but they say it could be because of pollution, or maybe they're just mutant shells- y'know, like some people have funny coloured fur, or different markings." He pointedly turned his head to regard Sonic with his blue eye, centred in its patch of white feathers.

Nodding, Sonic took the shell back and turned it over in his hands before looking back up at the magpie.

"So there isn't anything… special about this thing, then? Nothing really _weird?_"

Motley had delivered on his reputation as a fountain of knowledge, but Sonic had also hoped the trader would be amazed by the shell, that he would say it was like nothing he had ever seen before. That would have vindicated his memory of the night before even if it didn't help him find out what had really happened.

Motley clucked his tongue, misunderstanding what the teenager was getting at.

"It's a pretty shell, boyo, but the thing is I don't tend to sell ammonites. They're too common, y'know? That one _is _spectacular, and with that Star Post story…" he paused and gave an apologetic wing-flick, "But it's cracked, that's the problem. It's a shame. Nobody'd buy it, and if they did and it fell apart… well it wouldn't be good business, would it?"

Sonic waved him to silence.

"I'm not trying to sell it to you, Motley!"

"Good," the bird replied with a laugh and a wink, "Because then I'd have to start thinking I had competition, wouldn't I?"

...

Sonic had his eyes on the ammonite as he wandered through the market, trusting the people around him to get out of the way of his sharp quills. His mind went over the conversation with the magpie as he walked.

He had to admit that he didn't know much more now than he had this morning. He had learned what the shell was called and that it wasn't from a local beach, but little more than that. He'd assumed that the ammonite would somehow reveal to him who had dropped it and why if he found out as much as he could about it. Perhaps those strange markings had some hidden meaning, or maybe this was a kind of shell only found in _one _specific place.

It had been a silly assumption to make, he thought, feeling stupid and more than a little annoyed with himself. What Motley had said confirmed Johnny's opinion that this was just a seashell- maybe it was nothing to do with the floating craft and the box of blue light after all. Maybe it was a souvenir from someone's holiday. One of the kids who dared each other to touch the Star Post could have dropped it there, either accidentally or because it was broken.

Sonic hated to give up. Last night he had felt part of something huge and mysterious- not the child's playacting he was used to, but a _real_ adventure. Now, though, he seemed to have hit a dead end.

Where could he go from here? The shell might not be important, he mused, but there was always the Star Post. The creature might appear there again. And he could always persuade Porker to tell him about the Star Post again; he'd pay closer attention this time and maybe it would give him a few more ideas…

That seemed as pointless as running round in circles, though. He made a face at the thought of sitting through Porker's lecture for a second time; he didn't think his brain could take it.

His disappointment at not being able to afford the map or the shoes wasn't helping his mood, either. The hedgehog made a sour face- if he didn't successfully run that loop later, he was going to be _very _annoyed.

A sudden tap on his shoulder broke his train of thought. Sonic stopped and turned, expecting Johnny and Porker or someone else he knew. Instead he got a surprise.

"Excuse me," said the towering heron in arctic gear. "I noticed you had a rather unusual seashell. If I might make a suggestion- perhaps you shouldn't be asking yourself _where_ it came from, but instead what happened to it while it was alive?"

Sonic blinked incredulously, wondering why the bird's voice suddenly seemed so familiar….


	5. A trade

**Chapter 5**

.

Sonic was sure he'd heard that voice before somewhere.

"…Huh?" He frowned up at the tall heron, who was bending down awkwardly so that the hedgehog was almost at his eye level. Or at least, goggle level- the bird still hadn't taken off his mirrored ski goggles, and all Sonic could see above the bright yellow beak were his own brown eyes reflected back at him. He took an involuntary step back before he was able to stop himself.

"Ah. Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you…" The stranger's voice was warm and friendly- if a little muffled- but his height alone was intimidating.

"I don't startle, dude." Sonic shook his head. _I don't intimidate either, _he told himself firmly. His brow furrowed in a frown and his eyes briefly flicked towards the ammonite that the heron- Doc, Motley had called him- was so interested in.

"Hey, did you eavesdrop on that _entire_ conversation?"

This time it was the bird who drew back.

"No, not exactly," he paused sheepishly. "…Well, perhaps I _did_ listen in somewhat. But that shell is quite fascinating- I have an interest in such things, you see. I'm a scientist." A pause. "As you probably know, it can be… rather difficult to control one's curiosity sometimes," he added with a hint of a knowing chuckle in his voice.

The beak barely even twitched, but Sonic sensed the taller Mobian's grin even though the green scarf tightly wrapped around his face hid it from view.

"Good point," Sonic replied, returning the smile. He'd listened in on the heron's conversation with Motley himself after all; apparently it hadn't gone unnoticed. "Scientist, huh? That'd make you the second one who's turned up this month. There must be a factory that churns you guys out or something." His gaze took in the six-foot-tall oddity standing in front of him. The scarf and goggles hid every inch of his face except the beak, and his huge padded jacket was studded with a ridiculous number of pockets, all of which were bulging with Chaos only knew what. Thick gloves and a pair of outsize hiking boots completed the outfit along with a fluffy hat that would have looked silly on anyone else, but as it was just blended in with the rest of the strangeness. He was getting his fair share of bemused stares from the passing shoppers. Sonic was not surprised.

The apparently arctic heron looked like a scientist all right, the hedgehog thought.

Specifically the mad variety.

Sonic wryly lifted an eyebrow. "Expecting a snowstorm, Doc?"

"What?" He glanced upwards, as if he thought the first flakes would appear from the cloudless blue sky at any moment. Then he looked down at himself and gave another chuckle, a little sheepish this time. "Oh, you mean this…? Ah, well, that's complicated. It's not important," he waved a hand dismissively, changing the subject.

"I seem to be at a disadvantage here. I'm afraid I have no memory for names, but you already seem to know mine…?"

"I'm Sonic. Sonic the hedgehog."

"Interesting…"

"It fits." Sonic shrugged, noticing with some curiosity that when Doc spoke at length, his voice was not only vaguely familiar but it somehow managed to emerge through a beak that hardly moved at all. He was speaking now, apparently thinking out loud- albeit in a soft mumble. Sonic caught a few snatches- 'my, my, a hedgehog, how very fitting' and a word that sounded like _erin-something _that he couldn't make head or tail of.

Sonic frowned, then gave a puzzled shake of his head and held up the ammonite. "Hey. You were saying something about this?"

Doc looked up and paused confusedly for a moment before nodding. "Oh. Yes, I was. You've certainly found something intriguing here- do you mind if I take a look at it?"

Sonic considered for a moment before shrugging again. "Sure. Why not?" he replied, passing him the shell. It couldn't hurt, he told himself; anything new he found out about the ammonite could be useful. He didn't think the Doc was going to try and run off with it… and even if he did, he wouldn't get far. The image of a bird swathed in so much clothing he could barely waddle being pursued through a crowded marketplace by the fastest creature in Emerald Hill brought an instant, wicked grin to his face.

Doc didn't appear to notice as he delicately turned the ammonite over in his thickly gloved hands, its little thorns snagging on the fabric. The heron eyed the red and gold shell thoughtfully and nodded to himself as he held it up to his mirrored glasses, muttering things like 'well, well' and 'my, my' and 'I thought as much.' Eventually he turned his scrutiny to Sonic, considering him carefully while weighing the ammonite in one hand. He was still pondering quietly to himself.

"I wonder… no, no. Don't be ridiculous. Mustn't interfere, not when I'm so close…but…"

Sonic fidgeted under the intense stare. "Er, Doc…?"

The scientist started visibly as his train of thought was broken. "Ah… Sorry. Never mind me, I do that sometimes. Old habit."

"That's the first sign of madness y'know." A little smile played around the edges of Sonic's mouth. _He's not just a little bit crazy. He's nuts. Completely, utterly nuts._ The hedgehog gestured to the ammonite, deciding to hear him out anyway- it might be amusing, if nothing else."So what do you reckon?"

"Ah, yes, the shell." Doc cleared his throat, visibly collecting himself. "Well, it's like I expected. The magpie was right, in a way. This _Asteroceras _was altered during its life by some environmental factor-"

"This ass terror _what?"_

"_Asteroceras._ Where I come from that's the scientific name for…oh…" Doc trailed off, his body language radiating bemusement as he noticed Sonic's shoulders hitching in a halfhearted attempt to hold in a laugh.

"Forget it, Doc." The hedgehog waved a hand for him to continue after a moment, attempting to rein in his still very teenaged sense of humour. "Go on."

"Yes…ahem. I see, very funny." Doc cleared his throat and reached up to adjust his ski goggles. "…As I was saying, this specimen has been altered by something. That isn't unusual, since most Mobian life forms are somewhat… genetically unstable, prone to small, usually cosmetic mutations. That is especially true for ammonites. But _this _one didn't change by random chance- such a spectacular mutation could only be caused by the animal being exposed to something particularly unusual." He pointed to the spot where the shell's normal brown-on-cream stripes began to change into tattoo-like spirals and splashes. "It probably happened around this point, while it was still young. They're quite long-lived creatures, so this would have been several years ago at least."

Sonic's expression was slightly glazed. The middle of a market, after all, was not the kind of place where you would expect to get a surprise science lecture from a random passing headcase.

_Okay, _he said to himself, _nuts he may be, but_ _maybe there _is _something to this 'scientist' thing. He sounds like a Porker type all right…_

"So… it bumped into something weird and transformed, right?"

The oddly-dressed heron tilted his head to one side, chuckling ruefully. "Well, yes. I suppose that would have been an easier way to explain it. I have to admit I do go on a bit occasionally…"

"You're telling me. I left school for a reason, y'know," Sonic quipped.

"Really? How unfortunate, what in the world possessed you to do that? Not that it's any of my business of course," Doc commented absently before continuing. "…So in any case, you should assume that something rather powerful mutated this ammonite. What's more difficult to say is what it was."

"Something powerful…" Eyes narrowed in thought, Sonic echoed his words.

_Something powerful _was also the most fitting description he could think of for that blue thing he had glimpsed by the Star Post. Could that be what had changed the ammonite? No… Doc said whatever had happened to this shell had taken place years ago…

The young hedgehog frowned slightly, surprised by how close he was to believing the strange heron's explanation. Doc obviously had a few screws loose (maybe, he mused, his brain was at too high an altitude) and Sonic had heard even stranger stories and never believed a word of them- although he had to admit, part of him always wanted to. Doc, though, came across as far more sincere than those others. _He _certainly believed what he was saying… which as far as the teenager could make out, that was pretty similar to what Motley had told him except with longer words.

"Unfortunately," the 'scientist' concluded, "Without having actually seen the shell _in situ_- the place where it lived and died- I'm afraid there's no way for you to know exactly what caused this, not to mention where and when." He shrugged apologetically, then examined the ammonite for a few more seconds, apparently lost in thought again. "Actually…" he paused, considering. "Sonic, could I ask a favour of you? Would you mind if I borrowed this? As I said, this kind of thing is an interest of mine. It could be very useful for a… project I'm working on at the moment."

"Here it comes." Sonic's natural scepticism returned full-force. He rolled his eyes and shook his head adamantly. "No _way,_ Doc. I found that shell and I'm gonna figure it out."

"Oh, you needn't worry- I'd return it as soon as I've examined it more closely. This specimen could really advance my research. And you're obviously as curious about it as I am; if I discover anything new, I'll be sure to tell you."

Sonic imagined him smiling ingratiatingly beneath the scarf. He shook his head again, frowning.

"And how do I know you won't just take it and disappear? I don't even know what you look like under there. If I give you that shell, I might never see it or you again. No way." He held out a hand expectantly. "I let you see it, like you asked. Now I'll have it back."

"I see. Well, that's a fair point." the bird didn't hand over the ammonite, but nodded thoughtfully. "I can't really expect you to trust me, can I? Not when we've only just met, and here I am dressed like this..." His tone was resigned, almost sorrowful. "Now, then, how can I prove my honesty? Hmm… well, what if I were to give you something of mine in return?"

Sonic watched in bemusement as Doc's free hand fumbled with his various stuffed pockets, disappearing into one after another and finally back to the first with another muttered 'ah', where his gloved fingers eventually found and emerged holding an object.

The hedgehog's ears twitched forward incredulously as he stared at a very familiar looking folded square of aged fabric.

"That's Motley's treasure map…"

Doc nodded. "I have to admit, the magpie's sales patter eventually won me over. I'm something of an explorer myself, and I really couldn't resist in the end." Sonic's eyes followed the ancient map avidly.

"But I'm sure you could make much better use of it yourself," the tall Mobian continued. "And I have access to instruments that will tell me more about this ammonite that you would be able to find out on your own. So perhaps a trade would be in both our interests?"

Sonic hesitated for several long seconds. Then, although he found it incredibly difficult to do so, he rocked back on his heels and shook his head.

"No… I can't take that map, Doc. It's worth way more than some seashell, it just wouldn't be fair," he replied firmly, but with a trace of regret in his voice. For the second time that morning he forced himself to take his eyes off the map that the heron was now holding out invitingly. He _yearned _to look at it more closely and follow where it lead, but that map must have cost the Doc at least fifteen Rings. That was a fortune to the young hedgehog. As an orphan he was painfully aware that he relied on charity for just about everything; his pride would not allow him to accept it unless absolutely necessary. Especially since the map was such a valuable item and the heron a total stranger.

"I see..." Doc drew back from the hedgehog automatically; Sonic was looking at him with something close to a defiant glare, all bristling quills and offended dignity. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that no matter how proudly he held himself he still resembled a small, slightly fluffy brown cactus and his eyes kept flicking wistfully mapwards. Still, the scientist smiled to himself.

"Well, perhaps a loan then? I'll give you the map as a guarantee that I'll keep my word. Then in a few days- say, next market day- I'll meet you here and you can trade it back for the ammonite and whatever information I might have found. I expect you'll have uncovered a few of the map's secrets by then, too, that I would be interested to hear about."

Sonic paused indecisively. It was far easier to accept the idea of just borrowing the map for a while… he didn't want to risk losing the ammonite, but…

But I'm getting nowhere with that flipping seashell. That map is something else…if I could just get my hands on it, even if it's only for a few days…

"And how do you know I won't just take it and disappear?" he rephrased his earlier question.

"Oh, I think I can trust you, Sonic." The heron regarded the small hedgehog thoughtfully. "When I first offered you the map, you could easily have taken advantage. You're- how old are you, early teens?" at Sonic's nod, he continued. "Yes. Well, I expect most people your age would have, as you say, taken the map and vanished there and then. But you didn't. Actually, I'm rather impressed."

"Doc, you _are _crazy." His eyes gleamed at the praise and he unconsciously stood straighter. You didn't sniff at a compliment, after all.

"So we have a deal?"

For a few more seconds Sonic's eyes flicked between the mirrored gaze of the heron and the folded map. Thinking it over, Sonic decided it was likely that Doc would keep his word. Like any child who has had to dodge bullies he had developed a finely tuned sense of who was trustworthy and who wasn't; Doc came across as absentminded and slightly mad, but it was a harmless- not to mention comical- sort of madness. The hedgehog's instincts told him that the tall bird was as kind as he appeared.

And the fact that something Sonic really, _really _wanted was being waved in front of his face did nothing at all to influence him. Of course.

After a while he nodded, giving in to temptation.

"Okay. I'll look after this for you 'til next market day. But," he continued half-jokingly, "If you're not there, prepare to be chased next time I see you. And believe me, Doc, you won't outrun me."

"I don't doubt it," was the amused reply. "Don't worry. Promises are not for breaking, after all; I'll be here."

"You'd better be," Sonic warned, smirking as his fingers finally closed around the coveted treasure map.

He immediately began to unfold the fine material, the tall figure looming over him all but forgotten. What was this stuff anyway? Silk? He shrugged inwardly; what mattered was the map itself, not what it was drawn on.

Sonic couldn't believe that Doc had offered him such a valuable and unique object in exchange for an apparently near-worthless, cracked seashell. Maybe he was both crazy _and _too rich to care. There was definitely something weird about all this… he paused in his examination of the map, wondering if he had made a mistake in his eagerness to get a closer look at it.

Maybe, he thought, that cracked seashell was _very _important to Doc for some reason…

He was suddenly struck by a suspicion that was as insane as- well, as dressing for a blizzard in summer. His head snapped back up.

"Wait a minute…"

Doc was struggling with one of his many pockets, trying to fit the ammonite in- a difficult task when wearing large, padded gloves. As Sonic watched he fumbled and nearly dropped the shell, knocking it into the air and accidentally hitting himself in the beak before finally managing to catch it safely.

"Oh dear-"

Sonic stared at him in shock, then an amazed smile dawned on his face as he finally put two and two together and remembered where he had heard that voice before. In fact he had heard the very same 'oh dear' less than twelve hours earlier.

"I knew it! That _was_ youat the Star Post last night!"

"What? Er… sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about…" Doc looked around nervously, backing off a step. "What Star Post?"

Sonic was adamant, an excited gleam in his eyes as he pointed a finger at the 'heron'.

"Don't lie to me, pal. I recognise your voice. Who _are _you?"

If Doc answered, Sonic never heard it. At that moment he was knocked sprawling to the ground as something large and heavy slammed into him from the side, and yelped in surprise and outrage as he felt the map being torn from his hand.

...

"Whoops. Think I stepped in something," said a voice like rocks grinding together.

"Don't worry everyone, he's _fine_," a second individual said loudly before continuing at normal volume, "Must have tripped. Little thing like him shouldn't be out on his own, anyway…"

In front of Sonic's nose were three pairs of feet. Two pairs were bare and tipped with long black claws, and belonged to the same person. The third sported a pair of gleaming new trainers and belonged to the owner of the second voice, which had a mocking tone that Sonic recognised instantly. He felt his quills rise in response.

Groaning inwardly, he jumped to his feet- fighting the urge to rub his left shoulder, which had been slammed into the tiles hard enough to make it throb nastily.

"I don't have time for this, Lance," Sonic snapped at the greyhound, shooting him a quick glare before glancing around-

Where the heck is Doc?

A group of chattering squirrels had drifted between him and where the stranger had been a moment before. But now there was no sign of the tall… bird? Sonic wasn't so sure about that, now. Not if he was the same creature he had seen beneath the Star Post. He had noticed how unconvincing that beak looked up close, but why on Mobius hadn't he paid attention?

Mentally kicking himself, the hedgehog cast his eyes around the surrounding stalls- but whoever and whatever 'Doc' was, he had simply _gone._

Again!

How could someone so tall and ungainly vanish so quickly into a crowd of normal-sized Mobians?

Swearing under his breath, Sonic turned back to Lance and said the first thing that came to mind.

"This is all _your_ fault!"

Which was followed quickly by the second thing:

"…and _give me that map!_"

"This?" Lance made a show of examining the fragile silk square he had snatched from the younger teen. "Now what would you be doing with a map? Not planning on _going _somewhere, are you?" beside him the hulking form of Brindle the badger was shuddering with laughter. "My, what would I do without you? I'll have to find someone else to play with. Your pig friend, maybe." The yellow-brown dog raised a hand to his forehead theatrically, at the same time grinning widely enough to reveal a lot of sharp teeth.

Sonic ground his own, fighting to control his temper and continuing to send quick glances at the spaces between the stalls where a tall whatever-he-was might hide. Doc couldn't have gone far… if he could get the map back and lose these two idiots quickly, maybe he could still find him…

He lunged for the map, but Lance held it up out of reach. If Sonic wanted it, he would have to jump- but he couldn't bring himself to humiliate himself like that.

Besides, he knew from experience that Brindle would knock him out of the air the minute he tried, and swipes from those massive paws _hurt._

"Say please, runt." The dog's eyes gleamed cruelly.

"Give it _back._" The hedgehog gritted out, refusing to play along but too infuriated to come up with a decent retort. "It's not yours."

_It's not mine, either_, he added to himself. But it would be stupid to think Doc would show up next week, not now he'd been found out. Almost as stupid, Sonic berated himself, as trusting a random heavily-disguised stranger because he couldn't take his attention away from the bait being dangled in front of his nose.

Which means I've got to find him right now. But there's no way in hell I'm ever saying please to this flea-ridden piece of…

"That didn't sound like please to me. Didn't sound like it at all," Brindle observed reproachfully, shaking his shaggy head in mock dismay.

Lance returned the badger's smirk, thoroughly enjoying himself.

"No parents to teach him manners, that's his problem," he replied with a disapproving _tsk_ sound. "Although that's his own fault for being a nasty little mutant that nobody wants."

Sonic clenched his fists. He'd had that one thrown at him so often that it didn't send him flying into an instant rage anymore, but it still stung. It was obvious he wasn't going to get rid of Lance easily this time, not after what had happened with Porker. The dog had no doubt been seething over it all week and would do anything in his power to get his own back. And he would try to make it as unpleasant for the hedgehog as he could; with his badger sidekick in tow he would want to make his revenge as impressive as possible.

"Better that than a thug who's too thick to realise his 'friends' only stick around because they're too scared to argue," Sonic snarled while looking pointedly at Brindle, who glared steadily back. An instant later he regretted letting his mouth work faster than his brain again; this was no way to get the map back.

Yeah, good start, Sonic…

Too late now. He quickly looked over his shoulder- still no Doc.

"Know what I think?" Brindle smiled lazily, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the hedgehog. "I think that if the pincushion wants that rag so badly, he should earn it."

It didn't seem possible, but the greyhound's grin became even broader. He barked a laugh.

"You know what? I think you're right." He shoved at the hedgehog with his free hand. Sonic rocked backwards but otherwise refused to budge.

"Don't push me, Lance." A snarl.

"Why not?" the greyhound chuckled again. "If you want to prove how tough you are, runt, you're gonna have to _take _this map from me." He dangled it enticingly just out of reach. "In fact, I'll even give it to you. _If_ you can catch me."

"Oh, come on…" Sonic rolled his eyes. He'd been here before, but not for a while.

"Are you _really_ that stupid?"

"Are you really that scared of losing?"

"Losing? Haven't we already been through this, what, four times? You're not just stupid, you're _slow,"_ Sonic responded without thinking.

The greyhound made a point of eyeing the much smaller Mobian from the untidy quills on top of his head to the toes of his worn-out trainers, curling his lip disparagingly.

"That's what _you _think. Why don't we find out?"

With that he turned and took off running, shooting a parting grin over his shoulder.

At first Sonic hesitated, taking a last look behind him- by accepting the greyhound's challenge he would be losing the chance to catch up with Doc- but he _had _to get that map back. It was his only remaining clue.

And forfeit a race? Let Lance think he was afraid? Never!

"If he wants a race, he's got one," Sonic hissed under his breath. He bolted after the dog, only to be blocked by a wall of fur and muscle. Brindle's black eyes glittered amusedly as Sonic unsuccessfully tried to dart past on first the left, then the right; then they widened in shock as the infuriated hedgehog growled and leaped straight at him.

As Sonic disappeared into the crowd (but not for long; the outraged shouts and pained yelps of the people he barged past soon revealed which way he was heading), Brindle yelled something unrepeatable in his general direction, the muddy imprint of a shoe now marring the neat stripes on the top of his head...


	6. Chase

**Chapter 6**

**.**

There was some kind of commotion going on behind him. Doc ducked lower and slipped behind a large fruit stall with fluttering orange and yellow banners, thanking whoever was in charge of such things that those squirrels had come between him and the hedgehog at exactly the right moment.

He readjusted his beak and risked a look back the way he had come.

Doc was relieved to see that the disturbance was moving away. He wasn't sure quite what had happened after the dog and badger had barged past, jostling him. Some people, he grumbled to himself, had no manners whatsoever.

Manners or otherwise, though, the important thing was that the hedgehog…Sonic… wasn't coming after him- or at least was heading in the wrong direction.

What in Solaris' name did he think he was doing, approaching the adolescent Mobian like that and giving himself away? He had sworn to himself that he would not interfere with these people, at least not yet. He couldn't risk exposing his identity and his work at such a crucial stage. It was far too dangerous.

"Well, I should have thought of that before I tried to get my specimen back," he thought aloud. The ammonite _would _help with his research, but it wasn't nearly important enough to risk everything for.

He shook his head. Now he was faced with a dilemma; he hated the idea of breaking a promise, but the hedgehog had seen him at the Star Post. Sonic would be actively looking for him now. He could either approach the young Mobian again and give him some excuse- which would be dishonest, and Doc couldn't stand dishonesty- or try to avoid him outright.

However, he knew he wouldn't be able to hide from the hedgehog indefinitely. Even with a new disguise, if he had been found out once it could happen again- Sonic was not only insatiably curious but, if what he had seen was anything to go by, surprisingly intelligent. The tall scientist had to smile to himself. Discovering that Sonic had found the seashell and was following its trail had been as much of a shock as the encounter on the hill that had made Doc lose it in the first place- and he certainly had not expected to be recognised. It was clear he had underestimated the hedgehog.

_Now _what should he do, he wondered.

His common sense screamed otherwise, but there _was _a third option… after all, he couldn't help but like the little hedgehog, and hadn't he always wished there was someone he could talk to openly about his work besides himself?

_But that doesn't mean I owe him anything._

Doc shook his head. The truth was that Sonic reminded him of his family's disgrace and the reason he was living as a recluse here, so far from home. The reason for his work.

_Just because he's a hedgehog doesn't mean he has anything to do with what happened back then… and if my experiments succeed they will do him and his people far more good than I could by revealing myself. _He sighed, glancing down at the ammonite again. _Not to mention atone for what my ancestor did. And I just jeopardised it all. I don't think this youngster is going to give up easily, determined little thing that he is…_

Well, he thought, if he was going to be found out by one of the villagers he could have done a lot worse; beneath the attitude this Sonic seemed to have a strong sense of decency. He could probably be trusted, Doc cautiously decided. Still, he would have to think very carefully about how he was going to deal with this.

A few moments later he had melted into the crowd as much as his height would allow, pondering what he would do should the hedgehog unexpectedly pop up again. Which, he thought resignedly, was more than just a possibility.

…

The hedgehog in question was rapidly leaving the village behind as he pursued Lance though the bumpy Emerald Hill countryside at somewhere over thirty miles per hour.

Normally, running flat out like this filled him with a sense of exhilaration. The faster he ran the more the air itself became his enemy; it roared in his ears and whistled through his quills while battering at him like a living thing, threatening to throw him off course with its buffeting and trying to blind him by throwing grit and debris into his face so that he had to run with eyes narrowed to slits. Small tussocks and stones in his path became dangerous obstacles that he had to avoid or risk an extremely painful fall. Usually Sonic viewed these as challenges that existed simply for him to overcome. He revelled in it all, especially the way his feet skimmed over the ground and his heart pounded faster than it seemed possible, filling him with an ember-like glow as he approached his top speed.

This time, however, the only heat he felt was that of frustration and anger as he trailed behind the retreating figure of Lance.

His own indecision, Brindle's dirty trick and then having to shoulder his way though various groups of excruciatingly slow-moving villagers wandering around the market had cost Sonic dearly; although he was slowly but steadily gaining, Lance was still well in the lead. To make matters worse the greyhound was letting the map flutter from his hand like a small flag, openly mocking him.

The hedgehog lurched awkwardly to avoid a rock half-hidden in the grass that he hadn't seen until it was almost too late, so focused was he on the taunting figure ahead. The move cost him precious seconds as he nearly stumbled. Sonic snarled as he saw Lance pull away slightly- he was in trouble and he knew it.

There was no doubt in his mind that he was faster than Lance. In terms of sheer acceleration he could outstrip him easily, and at his top speed he had never been beaten. Had his been a fair race in which the two Mobians had started together Sonic would have been almost guaranteed to win.

But this was not a fair race. Because of the greyhound's head start it was rapidly becoming a game of endurance- and here Lance had the advantage, being the bigger and stronger of the two. It was no longer a question of who was the fastest runner but whether Sonic could close the gap before his stamina gave out and he was forced to stop. That was looking increasingly unlikely as maintaining this kind of speed was not something he could manage for very long. He was a sprinter, not a distance runner.

It also didn't help that Lance was equipped with brand-new running shoes, whereas Sonic's barely even had any tread left.

_I wouldn't be surprised if he bought those specially, just in case something like this happened. _Sonic narrowed his eyes further. _Well that's just tough, because I am _not _letting him beat me!_

He had already lost the ammonite and the chance to catch up with Doc; he was not about to lose the treasure map as well. And no _way_ was he going to lose the race.

Baring his teeth in a determined grimace, Sonic leaned into the barrier of air and _forced _his legs to pump harder, trying to ignore the burning in his lungs. He was rewarded by a small burst of speed and the distance closed a little, but it was still not quite enough and the map remained frustratingly out of reach.

Lance was purposefully leading him through a particularly uneven patch of the Zone where the caves were close to the surface; the ground was pocked with treacherous openings, hollows and deep chasms where tunnels had collapsed on themselves or opened up over time. The greyhound, although not as fast, still had energy to spare and navigated them easily, occasionally hopping over the smaller breaks in the terrain.

But Sonic's breathing was becoming more and more laboured and he could feel himself gradually slowing down; now he had to concentrate more on keeping himself going than on the broken landscape in front of him and was forced to weave between the patches of safer ground, which was not always the fastest path.

It would only be a matter of time before one of them made a mistake and fell. Seeing Lance starting to pull away, Sonic redoubled his efforts while mentally cursing the greyhound.

_If I break a leg in this stupid place I am going to _hurt _him, _he thought, scowling viciously. His eyes were fixed on the ground just ahead of him, but then –either through instinct or pure chance- he glanced up. His peripheral vision suddenly caught a glint of gold…

Lance was also tiring and was panting heavily, but his jaws were stretched wide in a grin as he approached another stone loop, or at least the remains of one- the ground had subsided beneath it long ago, leaving only about a quarter of the structure standing. The crumbling arch of stone curved upwards into the air like a broken claw.

He dashed past the loop and headed for a deep, wide crevice in the distance, which was crossed by a rotting log bridge. This time the runt didn't stand a chance, he congratulated himself as he risked a quick look backwards.

But Sonic wasn't there. Surely, the dog thought gleefully, he couldn't have lost him already? This was just too easy.

Then came a breathless shout- from _above._

It had been a risky move and one Sonic had never attempted before at this kind of speed, but he had been desperate enough to try. He had hauled his tired body into a last-minute direction change that rocketed him towards the shattered stone loop. One small jump onto the loop and he was scrabbling his way up the curved ramp it formed, the distance between the two runners stretching further as Sonic traded horizontal speed for vertical.

For a moment he thought he wasn't going fast enough, that he would stall and fall backwards- but then the crumbling edge where the rest of the loop had broken away was beneath his feet. Sonic pushed off in a leap that sent him sailing into empty space-

-and right though the middle of a large cluster of gold rings that he had spotted hanging in the air just above the loop.

Sonic didn't know exactly how many rings there were, but it was more than he had ever absorbed in one go before. The wave of energy made him gasp involuntarily. It felt like an ember inside him had suddenly erupted into a brilliant flame, its crackling power filling him from the core of his body to the tips of his fingers and toes.

He opened his eyes- although he couldn't remember closing them- to see the ground rushing up to meet him. But that was okay, he thought lazily, as the ground seemed to be 'rushing' somewhat slowly; he had plenty of time to get his feet under him for a proper landing.

"_Hey, fleabag! Over here!"_

"Wha-?" Lance's head snapped towards the sound of Sonic's voice as the hedgehog dropped out of the air, hit the ground running and exploded towards him in an impossible burst of speed- suddenly much closer than he had been moments before.

The greyhound scowled, lowered his head and accelerated. But the re-energized Sonic was gaining again.

The ring power buzzing in his veins did more than just restore his strength. The wind had worked against Sonic before, but now it was as if he had become part of it; it flowed smoothly over and around him, whisking bits of grass and debris away instead of blasting them into his eyes. Now he could run with his eyes fully open he had an even better view of Lance- who, he noted happily, was rapidly getting closer.

_Let's see you beat me now, poodle boy..._

He couldn't quite spare enough breath to laugh, although he wanted to; his heart and lungs were working just as hard as they had been before. But with the energy boost from the rings it felt like less of an effort, more natural somehow. Sonic grinned ecstatically as he pushed for more speed and his legs responded, eating up the distance between him and the greyhound until only a few dozen metres separated them.

Lance kept casting dismayed looks over his shoulder, Sonic noticed with amusement.

_Yeah, that's right. Didn't see this coming, did you?_

The hedgehog gracefully sidestepped a mound of jumbled rock that would probably have tripped him before. He had no idea how fast he was going now, but he knew he could do more if he tried…

He leaned forward and let his arms trail behind in an attempt to make himself more streamlined, trading energy for speed as he continued to accelerate.

Lance was suddenly just ten metres away, then two, and then Sonic could have reached out and grabbed his tail if he wanted. Instead though his eyes were fixed on the fluttering map in his hand.

The dog twisted around, his face contorted with anger and bewilderment. Sonic smirked triumphantly up at him as he drew alongside; he would just pluck the map out of Lance's hand as he overtook and left him in the dust-

Unfortunately, at that moment the ring energy that had been fuelling his speed boost abruptly and unexpectedly fizzled out.

It was as if he had hit a brick wall. Suddenly Sonic couldn't seem to get enough air. His stride faltered; a moment ago his legs had felt wonderfully light and strong, but now they seemed heavy, awkward and unable to keep up with his own velocity.

_Wha-? Dammit, why now? _Shock and exhaustion rippled across his face. Sonic knew that rings only lasted for so long, and this had happened to him before- although never at such a high speed and never with something so important at stake. A long list of sprains and torn muscles over the years had taught him what would happen if he tried to keep going. He had to stop.

No. Sonic gritted his teeth stubbornly. He would _not _stop. Not this time.

Lance was _not _going to get away with that map.

Sonic grunted with exertion as he made a reckless lunge towards the greyhound. The leap wrenched his already aching leg muscles but he knew he only had one chance before the gap between them was too great.

Gasping in shock at the hedgehog shot past, Lance had no choice but to release the map into his grasping hands. It was that or be dragged off his feet, which was something the dog did _not _want to do considering what he could see just ahead…

Sonic now had the map clutched tightly in his fist- but he didn't get the chance to savour his victory. He also saw the danger in front of him, but he was travelling much faster than Lance and unlike him did not have the luxury of being able to stop. Sonic tried desperately to slow down and turn aside but that only made matters worse- without ring power sharpening his reactions it was impossible to simultaneously deal with the rough terrain, keep his limbs moving at the right pace and manoeuvre at such a high speed.

The ground was no longer quite where his feet expected it to be. One misplaced step was all it took; the next few seconds were a whirling blur of grass and sky as Sonic instinctively curled into a protective ball, his momentum carrying him out-of-control towards the deep chasm that the two runners had been heading for.

A split second later there was nothing beneath him but air.

Sonic grabbed desperately for something to stop his fall. The fingers of one hand dug furrows into the grass and soil overhanging the edge of the cliff. There was an agonising moment when he thought his speed would tear through the roots and leave him falling through space, but they held firm and he gave a sharp yelp of pain as he was brought to a sudden halt, his body swinging bruisingly into the rock face and all his weight straining his previously injured shoulder.

As he hung precariously by a handful of weeds and earth he could hear the sound of rushing water somewhere far below.

Sonic shuddered. It wasn't the water itself that he disapproved of; water was just fine when it came confined in a bathtub or a glass, and rain was a nuisance but nothing more threatening than that- no, it was what happened when you ended up _under _the water that really bothered him.

A detached part of his mind began to dictate a calm lecture about how branches of the Emerald River on their way to the sea roared through the caves that undercut the Zone, how very strong the currents were down there and that anything that fell in would be smashed to bits in the turbulent water. You might find pieces washed up on a local beach eventually- _if _you were lucky.

The rest of him was preoccupied with how drowning was definitely, absolutely _not _the way he wanted to go.

He made a brief, panicky attempt to pull himself up, but all the strength seemed to have gone out of his arms. It would have been difficult to lever himself onto solid ground using one hand and an elbow even if he hadn't been worn out- despite the very real risk of falling to a watery death, Sonic wouldn't even consider dropping the map he had worked so hard for in order to free his other hand.

The hedgehog managed to drag his shoulders and chest over the edge before he slumped into the grass, where he lay gasping and grimly hanging on for dear life. He found that for the second time that morning he had a perfect worm's eye view of Lance's feet.

The greyhound had stopped just in time to avoid pitching himself into the fissure in the ground. Chest heaving, he stood bent over with his hands on his knees and a length of pink tongue hanging from the side of his mouth.

"Gotta admit, runt… you're quick… but I'm still better." He smirked. "You've got… no control."

Sonic shook his head and wheezed out a laugh. "I still… won, fleabag…"

"Cheating doesn't count." The dog's smile disappeared for a moment, but returned even more widely than before when he peered over the edge. "You're in no position… to call me names." Lance turned his gaze back to Sonic and his tone turned cunning as he noted the exhausted trembling of the arm preventing the hedgehog from slipping over the cliff. "Tell you what. Give me that rag… admit I beat you… and I'll think about helping you up."

"Not gonna happen." Sonic's death grip on the map tightened. He knew that the dog had no interest in it really, other than how it could be used to humiliate him.

The spent hedgehog renewed his efforts to heave himself to safety, bracing his feet against the stone and clawing at the grass. "I… do not… need… your help," he hissed determinedly between breaths, fixing Lance with a glare.

"Fine… come on then, prove it." The greyhound straightened, folding his arms and raising a sceptical eyebrow. "This I've got to see."

Sonic found it hard to believe that even Lance would let him fall to his death over something like this. Until a soft and apparently harmless tearing sound signalled that the turf he was clinging to had had enough and decided to part from the rock underneath.

His eyes widened as, almost in slow motion, the grass in his hand came away in a shower of white roots and clumps of dirt. He began to slide backwards, scrabbling at the soil as it crumbled beneath his fingers, unable to get any purchase on the disintegrating cliff edge.

Far, far below, the river hissed eagerly over razor-sharp rocks.

Sonic knew that the look he gave Lance then was pathetic, terrified, and exactly what the dog wanted. But even as his pride screamed outrage at him he knew that embarrassment was preferable to drowning.

_Anything_ was better than drowning.

But Lance didn't move. He just smiled, slowly and cruelly.

Sonic blinked incredulously.

"Wha-?"

The last of the grasses slipped through his fingers, and he fell….


	7. Hidden passage

**Chapter 7**

.

Sonic cried out on the way down. He couldn't stop himself.

The young hedgehog knew exactly what it would feel like to drown. He had been five years old and, although almost everything else from back then was lost in the haze of early childhood, he remembered it with perfect clarity. Perhaps because it was his very _first _memory- everything before that was not just hazy but completely blank; he couldn't even remember how he had got into the water in the first place- but whatever the reason, the moment was etched indelibly into his brain.

Time slowed to a crawl. Sonic had an eternity to relive the unbearable pressure in his chest as his attempts to expel water from his lungs only resulted in inhaling more of the stuff. His struggles had become increasingly frantic as he gasped for air that simply did not exist- he had known he was going to die, even though he was too young to understand what that meant.

In some ways he still was. But Sonic understood enough now to be even more terrified than his younger self had been, and somewhere between the edge of a ravine and the river below his body unconsciously echoed those earlier struggles, thrashing wildly and clawing at the air as if that could somehow slow his fall.

_No, no, nonono-!_

He had heard somewhere that hitting a body of water at speed was the same as hitting concrete. But he never expected the blow to be so hard or come so suddenly.

All the breath was forced from his lungs and pain spiked into his shoulder, ribs and back; for a few moments he continued to thrash, convinced he must have been driven underwater because his lungs refused to respond to his urging them to _breathe._ There was just no air.

Eons came and went. Then he suddenly coughed convulsively and wheezed a mouthful of glorious oxygen.

At about the same time he realised that the surface underneath him was far too solid- not to mention dry- to be the Emerald River.

Chest heaving as he fought for a full breath, Sonic opened his eyes- to find himself lying half-curled on a broad stone ledge that was green with moss and slightly damp, but nothing more threatening than that. He could hear the river rushing past uncaringly some distance below.

But the relief he felt quickly turned into boiling anger as he raised himself on his elbows and looked up. The sheer wall of the cliff rose above him, the rock barely visible through the curtain of slimy moss and plant life clinging to it. The cliff was completely vertical and looked slippery and unclimbable, but didn't rise very far; although his fall seemed to have taken decades, in reality it had been less than twenty feet. In Mobius' gravity that was enough to cause serious injury only to the very frail, heavy, or unlucky. Sonic was none of these, so apart from being winded and having a brand-new set of bruises for the collection he was relatively unharmed.

The same couldn't be said for his pride, however.

Sonic felt heat rising in his face, causing his fur to bristle as Lance peered down at him and howled with laughter.

"What do you know… you do have a hidden talent," the dog called down as soon as he regained enough control to speak. "That was the best impression of a stranded goldfish… that I've ever seen..."

"You…!" Sonic's breathing was still too laboured for him to manage more than a few words at a time, so he settled for flattening his ears and giving Lance a glare that could have melted titanium.

Lance had seen the ledge before letting Sonic fall. It was written all over his grinning face. And Sonic had never been able to hide how… nervous he was around deep water from the greyhound. Bullies had a sixth sense for these things.

_That… that mangy bastard! Let me think I was gonna drown—_

Sonic shook with fury and hurled himself at the cliff, fully intending to scrabble up the impossibly slick surface and give Lance more than just a few bruises. Or at least he tried to, but his exhausted legs had other ideas; the muscles cramped viciously the moment he was on his feet and sent him hissing onto hands and knees.

"Temper," Lance smirked nastily as he admonished the trembling, humiliated teenager. "It was just a little joke… you should have seen your face. It was priceless."

Sonic growled low in his throat, not trusting himself to try to speak.

"You could just have looked down, you know." The dog shrugged elaborately, scratched a floppy ear, yawned. "It's hardly _my _fault, is it? Besides, you've got that stupid map of yours… you should be happy," another snort of laughter.

Sonic ignored him, a brief moment of panic slicing through his anger. The map! He had almost forgotten. Where was it?

Glancing down, he was relieved to see the brownish silk still protruding from either side of his clenched fist. By some miracle he had managed to keep hold of the precious map.

"Not that it'll do you much good down there, though," Lance finished amusedly. "But don't worry… I wouldn't leave you there. I'll go fetch some help, shall I…?"

The dog was obviously enjoying himself. Sonic bared his teeth and staggered upright, defiantly ignoring the screaming protests from his legs.

"I said… I don't want… your help," The hedgehog managed. It was slightly reassuring to see that Lance still looked a little unsteady himself. But only slightly.

The smug look on the older Mobian's face didn't help at all.

"It looks a bit different from up here. Maybe I'll make sure your little friends know where to find you. In a few days. If I feel like it. Unless you want to ask nicely…?"

"…Up your _Asteroceras_, Lance."

"Suit yourself, then." He sniggered and raised a hand in a parody of a childish wave.

"Bye bye, runt. Try not to fall in the river. If there's one thing we don't need around here, it's pollution."

The pointed yellow snout withdrew from sight. Sonic gathered himself and yelled after him- "You'll regret this, Lance-!"

But either his breathless shout didn't reach the top of the cliff or Lance simply didn't care. Sonic scowled up at the place where he had been, but it quickly became obvious that the dog had gone.

If anyone _had_ overheard the tirade Sonic sent up the cliff with each breath over the next few moments, they would have been impressed by the sheer volume of insults that one small, out-of-breath hedgehog could produce. Some were directed at the cliff itself as well as Lance, but fortunately the cliff was incapable of hearing them.

Sonic quickly ran out of steam, however. Deflating, he sat down heavily, unable to stay on his feet any longer.

"…Oww." He winced. He'd run too fast for too long- again- and now he had to pay the price; he spent several minutes trying to massage the cramp out of his legs, before flopping onto his back with a groan. It was an uncomfortable position for any hedgehog, but at least it made breathing easier and the stone felt pleasantly cool through his quills.

_Ugh. Total burnout…_

Sonic had overstretched himself often enough to know that the fatigue would pass quickly, and that he hadn't done himself any real damage this time- he would be in a lot more pain if he had, he knew that from experience as well- but for now he couldn't do much more than lie there and stare at the sky while he waited for his body to stop taking revenge on him for pushing it past its limits. Everything throbbed dully, especially his wrenched shoulder and the various bits of him that had slammed into the rock. Through the fingers of the hand resting on his chest he could feel his heart thudding at a frightening rate. The blood roaring in his ears made the sound of the river fade in and out in time with his racing pulse.

It had been worth it, though. A tiny smile appeared on his face. He'd beaten Lance- sort of- and got the map back. Better still, he'd reached a pretty good speed back there.

Sonic wished he had some way of telling exactly how fast he had been going, but it had to have been much faster than his usual thirty mile per hour sprint… close to one hundred, maybe? He had no way of knowing. But he was sure that even if he hadn't beaten his previous best, it must have been _very _close.

After a moment's thought he decided to give himself the benefit of the doubt and assume that he had. After all, there had been a _lot _of rings.

Still wasn't fast enough, though. His expression soured.

Stupid ravine, getting in his way like that. Stupid rings, running out at exactly the wrong time! Again!

_Next time. _His eyes narrowed. _Next time I'll be faster… and it'll be Lance who gets run off the flipping cliff!_

Eventually his heartbeat and breathing began to slow to something approaching normal. Sonic sat up gingerly, then tried to smooth down his quills and shake out the grass and dirt that had become caught in them. Red, blue and pink bits of crushed flower petal flew in all directions; he must have rolled through a patch of brightly coloured Mobian daisies on his way over the cliff. Most of the debris, however, remained lodged in his stubbornly messy quills and a sickeningly sweet floral odour wafted out, making him sneeze.

_Great, now I look and smell like a flipping Solstice tree. _Sonic brushed at himself ineffectively, wincing. Some of his thick spines had been wrenched the wrong way on impact, adding annoying little stinging pains to the rather impressive list of injuries he was racking up today.

_So…_ _I'm stuck half way up a cliff. _Now _what? _He wondered. He knew that Lance would be back, sooner rather than later despite his claims. He would return to the village only long enough to brag. Any minute now he would start telling anyone who would listen about how he had made Sonic scream like a baby…

The hedgehog seethed, a growl bubbling up uncontrollably in his throat.

…And then, once Lance had finished publicly humiliating him, he'd come back here. His idea of 'bringing help' would no doubt be to bring Brindle to help him gloat, and probably stones to throw as well.

What did that stupid mutt get out of tormenting him, anyway? Sonic had nothing against practical jokes- he'd played enough of them on unsuspecting villagers- but those had been harmless fun. What Lance had done was far from harmless. It was downright cruel.

Probably, the hedgehog mused, Lance picked on him because he knew he would fight back. Sonic shook his head. Well, there was no way in hell he was ever going to cower before the greyhound like Porker, or bow and scrape and agree with everything he said like that idiot Brindle. If Lance thought he had won he had another think coming, because that was not going to happen. Not now, not ever.

_Stupid mutt can do what he likes, _he told himself determinedly. _By the time he gets back here I'll be long gone. _

Sonic would show that sad excuse for a canine that he didn't need his 'help' or anyone else's. He would get out of this mess by himself.

The question was, how?

Sonic looked around, frowning. The ledge was long and wide enough to accommodate several hedgehogs and seemed solid enough, so there was little chance of him falling off. But he couldn't see anything that would allow him to climb back up, either. There were no obvious handholds higher up that he could hang on to, only sheer rock, moss and thin, fragile-looking vines.

Sonic shuffled closer to the edge. On the opposite side of the gap were more ledges, as if the ground had fallen into a series of steps as it collapsed, or parted, or whatever had happened to create this inconvenient bit of geography. But the gap was far too wide to jump- especially with that water down there, he thought with a shudder- and that side of the cliff looked even less promising than the one he was on. He couldn't see if there were any more ledges on his side.

Only one way to find out. There was no point in putting it off any longer.

Sonic steeled himself, and looked down.

The ravine was deep. More than deep; the sides seemed to plunge down endlessly. Here and there jets of water fountained out of cracks in the stone, and there were indeed more ledges further down- a whole series of them on both sides of the cliff. Sonic still couldn't see if they led anywhere useful, though; the sunlight only reached so far, and the deeper he looked the more the stone walls disappeared into shadow.

At the very bottom was a glint of water, a hint of white foam. The river.

The ledge was scattered with clumps of soil and small pebbles. Sonic carefully toed one over the edge; there was a very long pause, then a very tiny splash as the unfortunate pebble vanished into the river.

Sonic's ears went flat against his head. He gulped and hastily drew back until his quills pressed into the damp moss that covered the cliff.

"Okay… straight down is definitely not an option."

He _thought _he could reach some of the other ledges on his side. Maybe they would lead him to a place where he could get back to the surface.

Or maybe they would lead him straight into the river.

_Well, you do have a map, remember?_

Of course! Mentally kicking himself, Sonic leaned back against the cliff and shook the map open. He smirked- this was _exactly _the kind of situation where it would come in handy. And how good would it be to find a way out of here using the very map that Lance had scoffed at as useless?

That would be one way to get revenge on the greyhound, he thought. Congratulating himself for coming up with such a perfect idea, he held the frayed square up to the light and squinted determinedly at it.

The sunlight shining through the aged silk revealed details that had been too small or faded to see before. Normally Sonic would have had little or no interest in how the map had been made, but even he couldn't fail to be impressed by how fine some of the outlines were. They must have been drawn using a single hair. Now he could see a sort of network of faint lines running through the Zones. They looked a little like veins- rivers, roads or just the effects of age on the fabric? He had no idea.

He was less than impressed to notice the new grass stains that had appeared around the edges of the map. Sonic scowled and called Lance a few more choice names in his head, but didn't dwell on it for too long.

As he had already noticed, Emerald Hill was not marked out as a separate Zone on this map. He located it easily enough, however, and his brow furrowed as he tried to figure out exactly where in the Zone he was.

Sonic had a reasonable sense of direction and knew he must be somewhere north of the village because he had been heading away from the sea. But the village wasn't marked, either. It probably hadn't existed when the map was drawn.

Eventually he shrugged and made an 'educated' guess, ringing a tiny area that looked promising with a gloved fingertip. There was a mess of fine lines there that _could _represent the broken ground in the area and a bolder, jagged one that _might _have been the ravine. Next to the possible ravine were two tiny symbols. Sonic brought the map closer to his eyes, trying to make them out.

The first mark was a black blob beneath a curved line a bit like a wide letter _n. _It looked vaguely familiar, but Sonic couldn't remember where he had seen it before. The second symbol was a group of five lines, three of which were vertical, one leaning to the side and one horizontal. It looked like a collection of rods stuck in the ground, a couple of which had fallen over.

And obviously, the teenager thought, these two symbols together meant that…

…What the heck _did _they mean, anyway?

Sonic's face fell. He didn't have a clue. Weren't maps supposed to have instructions that told you what all the symbols meant, or something? Eyes scanning the map, he found nothing but some very faint markings right on the edge of the silk square.

If this map had ever had a key, it had frayed or been worn away long ago.

Sonic struggled with it for another minute or two, but it wasn't long before his short supply of patience ran out. Huffing in irritation, he let his hand drop.

"…Great. Well, that was a fun waste of time."

He hated to admit it, but Lance might have been right about the map. _This _time. It was just too small to give much more than a general idea of where something was, even if you did know what those odd little marks meant. The line-and-blob thing and the fallen-over-sticks thing, whatever they were, could be right where he was sitting- or they could just as easily be miles away.

That might be enough to help you find something, Sonic mused sourly, but not when you were trapped on a ledge and weren't even sure what you were looking _for _in the first place.

But that did not mean he was going to give up. No way. Not for all the rings on Mobius.

_So that leaves me two choices. _The hedgehog stuffed the map into his glove pocket, thinking. The easy way would be to jump from ledge to ledge and see where he ended up without the map's help. Normally he would have done just that without a second thought, but he kept remembering the nearly inaudible splash that the pebble had made as the river swallowed it up. Those other ledges might not be as solid as this one. He'd had bits of the Zone unexpectedly fall out from under him several times before…

_Yeah, death by stupidity, Lance would just love that. _Sonic made a face at the sheer cliff. _The hard way it is, then. Straight up._

He got to his feet slowly, testing his legs; they still felt tired and shaky, but at least now they were listening to him. Then he turned his attention to the cliff.

It didn't look any more scaleable now than it had earlier. Apart from a few bare patches, slimy green growth covered the entire surface. The vines stopped just above his head and looked like they had all the strength of damp noodles.

A fringe of drier vegetation marked out the top of the cliff, twenty feet up.

Twenty feet. Sonic mulled it over. He knew he could leap perhaps twice his own height, and that was when he _hadn't _just run himself into the ground. Or over a cliff.

Even he could do the math.

_Forget the math. _Sonic eyed the hanging vines, and rolled his shoulder until something clicked. _I can do this. It's only twenty feet. If I can't jump that high, I'll just climb the rest of the way. Easy._

His first leap was only just high enough to grab handfuls of the dangling vines.

The thin tendrils took his weight for about half a second before tearing free of the cliff face. Dumped unceremoniously back where he had started, he quickly scrambled as far from the edge as possible.

Great. Now he had a sore tail to think about, too.

Globs of moss and earth rained wetly down on him. His spines bristled.

This time Sonic crouched and tensed in as close an approximation of a coiled spring as a hedgehog could manage, and put all his remaining strength into the leap.

It was a good effort, considering. His hands stretched upwards, dug into the moss and held firm, leaving him clinging to the cliff face almost half way up.

Although the effort had left him panting again, Sonic smirked to himself. So far, so good. Now if he could just pull himself up the rest of the way…

He would have to hang on with one hand while the other searched for something to hold on to higher on the cliff, before hauling himself upwards. This was the tricky part, as any real muscle power he had was in his legs rather than his upper body.

No such thing as impossible, the hedgehog reminded himself firmly. This was just like climbing a coconut tree, and how many times had he done _that?_

He flattened himself against the cliff, dug the toes of his shoes into the moss and pushed upwards while the fingers of his left hand scrabbled for a new place to grip. The surface seemed to give way a little beneath his feet; perhaps the spongy vegetation was thicker than he had thought.

His searching fingers eventually discovered something that felt a little more solid, perhaps a small lip of stone beneath the moss. Just what he needed! Sonic shifted his weight to that hand in order to free the other, hissing between his teeth as a sharp ache shot up his arm from the much-abused shoulder.

_I can do this. I can do this. _

He lifted his right foot, preparing to inchworm his way up the cliff. The left sunk further into the moss.

Unfortunately, treadless shoes and wet vegetation were not known for working together. Or perhaps his tired leg muscles were simply making their opinion known again.

There was a jolt as his foot slipped. His knee banged into the cliff, and suddenly he was _only _hanging on by his hands.

_What-? _Sonic's eyes widened and he kicked wildly, but his smooth soles could not get any purchase on the slippery green surface.

Then came the soft tearing sound that he had learned to dread, and the moss beneath his fingers began to peel away from the rock wall.

"Oh you have got to be kidding…"

He had just enough time to wonder why the plants of Mobius were out to get him today before he fell, taking a strip of green stuff with him, and landed heavily on the ledge again.

On his back. Which pushed several hundred of his own quills painfully backwards into his skin.

Sonic howled some very special expletives at the world in general, hastily rolling onto his stomach as large lumps of mud and moss pelted down all around him.

"Ow! Dammit!" Soil pattered onto the top of his head. Sonic's fist thudded against the stone ledge in time with his words. "Stupid! Flaming! Cliff!"

The cliff still didn't care one little bit, but the hedgehog's anger was not really meant it anyway. Mostly it was directed at himself.

He should have been able to scale the cliff. He should have been able to beat Lance much more easily, without running himself ragged in the process. Sonic knew the potential was there. He could _feel _it. But it was as if something was blocking him, preventing him from achieving that potential.

Rings could unlock the barrier for a while, giving him a brief taste of the near-effortless speed and ability he knew he should be capable of. But it never lasted long, and it was never quite enough.

He felt… incomplete. And it was slowly driving him crazy with frustration.

Sonic punched the ledge again. He shot an accusatory glare at the now-smarting fingers and the grass and mud stains on the once pure white glove. He lifted his head to glare at the indifferent cliff face as well.

And froze, blinking.

"Huh?"

A sheet of vegetation had torn away from the cliff and now lay in clumps on the ledge around him, exposing the grey stone of the cliff itself, glistening with moisture and streaked with brown trickles of mud.

And where there had previously been nothing but featureless moss, a Mobian-sized opening was now visible directly in front of him. A perfectly circular tunnel cut into the solid rock, barred by a rusted metal grating that still had bits of greenery clinging to it.

Sonic's ears twitched forwards as he got to his feet and approached the hole in the cliff. _Now _he remembered where he had seen that funny little symbol before- it appeared on modern maps as well as his ancient one, and it meant _cave entrance._

If going up or down the cliff was out of the question, he thought as his anger evaporated and his face split into an incredulous grin, then he would just have to go _through!_

...

The grating turned out to be just as flimsy as it appeared. When Sonic pushed at it experimentally, the mortar holding it in place crumbled away and the mesh clattered forwards into the tunnel- nearly taking the hedgehog with it, since he hadn't expected it to give way so easily.

Now that problem was out of the way, Sonic peered into the opening. The tunnel- which actually resembled a tube or pipe- was slick with condensation and obviously Mobian-made; it appeared to be constructed of the same dressed stone as the ruins dotted around Emerald Hill, although without the decorative tiles. It sloped gently downwards until it was consumed in shadows; he couldn't see how long it was or what might be at the other end.

A more educated mind would have said the stone tube appeared to be ancient, then marvelled at the way the stones fitted together so precisely and the tiny stalactites that had formed on its roof since it was constructed. But the young hedgehog was so used to seeing (not to mention getting lost in) tunnels like this all over the Zone that they were not something to marvel over- to him it simply looked old, dark and wet, although to his credit he did notice that the metal grate that had blocked it was far more modern, even if time had not treated it nearly as well.

Sonic's eyes gleamed with curiosity. Finding a part of the cave system that he hadn't explored yet was exciting enough, but someone had actually gone to the trouble of blocking this one off- that was the really interesting part.

His logic was simple. The tunnel being blocked meant that there was something at the other end that he was not supposed to be able to get at. That alone was enough to get his attention, but whoever had put that something there probably hadn't intended to leave by way of a dingy little tunnel that led to nowhere.

Therefore, there had to be another way out.

_Take that, Lance, _he thought triumphantly.

He hesitated a little before venturing into the tunnel, however. Water, of course, was right at the top of Sonic's list of Things To Avoid, but enclosed spaces were high up on the list, too. The young hedgehog _hated _the feeling of being trapped. Not to mention the things that lived in enclosed spaces; they were also near the top of that list, and he was sure he could see some cobwebs in there…

Sonic's quills rustled as he shook himself. He was _not _going to let Lance beat him for fear of a spider or two. And as for the small spaces… well, he assured himself, as long as he kept moving he'd be fine.

His foot came down on the metal grating that had fallen into the tunnel.

And immediately went out from under him as the grating slipped against the smooth, wet stone, his backside meeting the ground yet again as he toppled over and went skidding uncontrollably down the slope into the dark…


	8. Instincts

**A/N: WELL WELL WELL. Look who's updating this thing again after- what? A year? (university is a wonderful thing. Really.)**

**Shortish chapter, but thought it was _about time _I got poor Sonic out of that never ending cliffhanger and onto the next. Also I've gone in and fixed the formatting on the earlier chapters so they're actually readable now, and tweaked a paragraph here and there that were painfully out of character.**

**Anyway, yes. This fanfic isn't dead yet... well, maybe just undead...**

…...

**Chapter 8**

.

A round section of rusty metal grating rolled out of a stone-lined tube half way up a wall, landing with a splash and a clang in the shallow pool below. For a moment or two there was silence, apart from fading echoes, trickling water and the tiny splashings of fish and small cave dwellers fleeing from the intruder into their pool.

…Then the peace was shattered by another sound, wavering but steadily rising in volume as its source approached at speed. The fish, wisely, stayed put in the crevices they'd hidden in as the peace was shattered again-

"_YAAAAAAAH-!"_

A tight ball of brown quills exploded out of the tunnel as if shot from a cannon, splashing down wetly a short distance from the grating, before bouncing once, rolling a little way, and uncurling. The soaked hedgehog shook his head, sending droplets of water mixed with bits of dirt and grass flying in every direction.

"What the… ow…" Dizzy brown eyes blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the dim light- before his current position sank in. Or maybe it was at that moment that he became aware of the freezing water sinking into his fur. In any case the eyes widened suddenly and in a flurry of flailing and splashing he scrambled backwards until he was sitting on relatively dry ground, cursing under his breath.

"Stupid water." Grimacing, Sonic aimed a glare at the offending pool. It was large, formed where the floor had sunken a little, but no more than a few inches deep. A cloud of silt and some floating bits of crushed grass and clods of mud marked where the grubby hedgehog had fallen in, and another murky swirl hovered over the site of the grating that had gone in before him. Otherwise the water was crystal clear, welling up from a crack in a floor made of grey stone slabs that fit together too precisely to be anything natural. Brilliant green water plants waved gently back and forth, and a couple of tiny, threadlike amphibians with bright red feathery ruffs around their heads drifted out to investigate the disturbance, before disappearing into the foliage again with a flick of white tails.

It was actually quite pretty.

And very wet.

Sonic snorted, before clambering to his feet gingerly. Yes, those bruises were going to be fun tomorrow. He wrapped skinny arms around himself as he gave a little shiver, the soaking wet fur plastered against his skin chilling him slightly in the cool subterranean air. The discomfort was instantly forgotten, though, the moment he lifted his head and looked around at the cavern he'd tumbled into.

"…wow…" The young hedgehog breathed, his ears perking and then swivelling back and forth as a whispery echo bounced around the huge space: _'ow… ow… ow.'_ Sonic blinked in surprise, before taking a deep breath-

"_HEY!"_

_-_And then bursting into a wide grin as the cave yelled it right back at him.

"_LANCE SUCKS!" _ Shouted at the top of his lungs, the echoes created a cacophony of sound that probably hadn't been heard there in years- as if an unseen crowd was agreeing with his comment. "Heh… awesome…"

Beaming wickedly at his discovery, Sonic immediately began to move further into the cave, avoiding the giant puddles that had formed on a floor become uneven with time. Shafts of sunlight filtered down from cracks somewhere above, sending silvery water reflections dancing on walls that were streaked with bright emerald moss. Stalactites clung to the ceiling- including some really big ones that reached right down to the floor-

-Sonic frowned, then blinked as his mind made a connection. Those weren't stalactites. They were too perfectly round, too evenly spaced around the cave which, now he looked at it and ignored the plantlife and rubble, was long and rectangular. Some of the 'stalactites' had fallen, leaving cylindrical blocks of stone the size of the average Mobian littered around like toppled stacks of cola cans after one of Sonic's all-night movie marathons.

He stooped to brush a layer of dirt off one of the fallen blocks. The teenager made a surprised sound as a faint carving was revealed- tilting his head for a better view since the piece of masonry had landed the wrong way up, he was able to make out a figure- stiffly posed in profile, with a sharp snout and what seemed to be long drooping quills. It was holding a spear or possibly a staff. The image looked somehow familiar, but Sonic couldn't place where he'd seen something like that before.

"…Heh, sucks to be you, stuck upside down like that." A pause, then a smirk, "…And they forgot to draw your ears."

Straightening with a slight wince, Sonic glanced around again before pulling the frayed old map out of his glove pocket and unfolding the wadded cloth. It was as soaked through as the rest of him, but the dye hadn't run- in fact the moisture had made the faded inks clearer, if anything. The brown hedgehog jabbed a finger at the two little symbols on it that had baffled him so much earlier, and gave a soft incredulous chuckle.

A symbol that meant 'cave,' and next to it a picture of what looked like vertical sticks- some of which had fallen over.

"Columns. They're _columns. _That symbol must mean ruins!" Grinning in triumph at finally figuring it out, he gazed around and what he now realised was not a cavern but a vast underground hall- one so old that it could almost be mistaken for a natural formation. "Man… Motley would love to see this place…"

Sonic's eyes gleamed with excitement as he blinked at the surroundings, recognising Mobian-made features now… the narrow rectangular shape of the 'cave', albeit softened and twisted by time, the marks on the columns that he had taken to be random but turned out to be, now he was really looking, water-worn carved designs... He'd been in the ruins beneath Emerald Hill before, but this one was new to him. When was the last time someone had been in here? And why had it been blocked off with that metal grating? Sonic had practically forgotten about his rage at Lance by now- now he was thinking about _adventure. _Booby traps and hidden treasure. This was just the kind of place you'd find it, too. Maybe it had been used as a Sky Pirate hideout once and that was why it was sealed off…

…Maybe they were still here!

Practically bouncing in place now, Sonic glanced back the way he'd come. Now he knew what to look for he could see stone fittings in the wall leading up to the tunnel he'd entered by, perhaps meant to hold a ladder that had long since rotted away- but they'd serve well enough as handholds, so he knew he could get out that way if he needed to. Not that he wanted to- he'd just end up back on the ledge overlooking the river again, which wouldn't do any good at all since he knew he couldn't climb back up that sheer cliff. The bruises across his back and shoulders from his various hard landings reminded him of this fact with each dull throb.

No, the only way out was through the cavern. But which way? This couldn't be the only room there was, surely… and looking around, he could see it wasn't. There were more of the tubelike circular openings in the walls, some at ground level and some higher up, all with the same heavy rim of stone and wide enough for a largish Mobian to pass through with room to spare. As he walked down the echoing hall he could see that some of those entrances had collapsed in on themselves, and others had been purposefully and carefully sealed with heavy blocks long ago. But that still left him with a choice of five or so that remained open and accessible.

The hedgehog's brows furrowed. Okay, so what did he know about ancient ruins and undisturbed pirate hideouts? According to the films and comics… probably only one of those tunnels would be safe. The rest might be booby trapped and lead only to messy death, or to the Labyrinth Zone, which if he'd heard right amounted to the same thing.

The question was, which was the safe path…?

The thought of messy death didn't really faze him _too_ much, though. To the excited and reckless fourteen year old, this seemed more like a puzzle or a video game; since he wasn't _actually_ falling to his doom at this particular moment, danger seemed to be a remote possibility that didn't have too much to do with him. He picked his way between the pools on the floor to the middle of the hall, where he had the best view of his choices, and spent a good thirty seconds considering- which was an eternity as far as he was concerned.

He was eyeing a passageway which looked particularly clean and well preserved when something else caught his attention. An ear swivelled towards the back of the hall, interested brown eyes quickly following.

There was another exit. One he hadn't even noticed before, hidden in the shadows of a cracked, bulging wall.

"…Oh c'mon. That has messy death written all over it."

It wasn't even a tube-entrance like the others. This was just a hole, a wide asymmetrical crack formed by that wall shifting and collapsing at some point in the distant past. The edges of the fissure were damp and slimy, but even the ever-present moss seemed to shrink away from it.

A huge dusty cobweb stretched across the crack. Beyond was darkness. Sonic shuddered, and not just because of the cold. Damp quills rose and bristled.

"….no way, I'm not an idiot."

Muttering to himself, Sonic tried to ignore what his instincts were telling him. There were cobwebs there, and the whole thing looked like it would collapse at any second. You'd have to be stupid to go that way, he told himself.

But it was still there. That familiar faint tug at the back of his mind, a little niggle that said _go that way. _Something he usually trusted. It had lead him to Rings more times than he could remember… perhaps it was simply his nature as a thrill-seeker to take the more dangerous path. Or perhaps it was the subtle change in the quality of the air from that direction… a faint scent… something familiar? Whatever it was, that crack in the wall was, somehow, infinitely more interesting than the other dull, safe-looking exits.

"I'm not suicidal." A snort, and a glance at the cobwebs spanning the fissure. Then: "…I'm not a coward either."

That inner voice had never failed him before, after all.

And if someone was going to hide an exit… they'd make it the least obvious one- right? That's what the movies said. The guy who took the easy looking path was always the one who fell in the spike pit or got squished by the big stone ball or got covered in spiders…

Ugh, spiders.

Sonic shivered slightly, shrugged one shoulder and headed for the crack in the wall.

"Here goes nothing…"

...

"I don't know how he did it, but you can tell the little runt that next time he'd better _stay_ where I put him."

Lance, Johnny mused as the greyhound's finger jabbed him hard enough in the chest to make him rock back on his heels, seemed to be just a tad annoyed.

Understatement. Sharp teeth gleamed in Lance's jaws as he snarled accusingly at the rabbit. It didn't seem to be helping that Brindle, standing on all fours beside the dog, was glancing back and forth between the two of them with obvious confusion and looking very dubious about the whole situation.

"Uh, Lance, are you sure you were looking in the right—"

"Shut up, Brindle." The badger was quickly silenced with a snap and a glare, before the glower was turned on its original target again. "Well?"

The target in question's long grey ears drooped towards his back as he looked baffled himself, and very much aware of Porker hovering nervously behind him. A quick glance over his shoulder to reassure the pig, before his eyes turned back to Lance and he shook his head.

"Well what? I've already told you I have no idea what you're talking about. And we don't know where Sonic is, haven't seen him for hours…"

_Not that I'd tell you if I had, _Johnny added silently, having the sense not to say that out loud. He really didn't know where Sonic was, though… which was starting to worry him a little, even given the younger hedgehog's tendency to wander off if something shiny caught his eye. If Lance was involved, Sonic going missing could only be a bad thing.

Please tell me you didn't get in another fight, Sonic…

The greyhound curled his lip again, snorting in disgust. He glanced around- the street around them was busy, bustling with people heading home from their weekly shop at the market. Not a good choice of location if he wanted to press an issue, and he'd been too irritated to set up an ambush and excuse like he'd done with Sonic.

"Whatever, bucktooth. I've got better things to do. Just tell the pincushion I'm gonna want a word with him later, if he hasn't already drowned." Seeing Johnny's ears flatten further and Porker's little start at that, he gave a nasty chuckle. "C'mon, Brindle. Let's not waste their time, they've got a river to search."

"…Johnny? Y-you…. don't think that…?" Porker piped up, scared, as the two older Mobians nonchalantly disappeared into the crowd.

"No, they were just trying to frighten us. Lance may be a nasty piece of work but I don't think he'd go that far…" Despite his assurances, Johnny bit his lip, obviously worried. His hedgehog friend was reckless, but he wouldn't go near the river… Lance had just been toying with them, again. Had to be. Right?

"We should start looking though. Sonic was supposed to have met us at the loop by now... it's not like him to miss a chance to show off." He attempted a reassuring smile, but it was clear he was genuinely concerned now. "He might already be over there. We'd better check…"

The worried expression remained on his face as he glanced back the way Lance and Brindle had gone, shaking his head. Why did he get the feeling this was going to end badly?

...

"Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

It was a phrase that the young hedgehog had uttered more times than he could remember. Sometimes sheepishly while applying sticky plasters and bandages to bruised and scraped limbs, sometimes while eyeing the sad remains of some expensive- and now very broken- object.

This time, the catch-all words bounced unheeded off damp cavern walls, while his eyes stained at the dark- pupils dilated to their utmost but failing to pick up even the tiniest glimmer of light.

Sonic was lost. And had reached that point where he finally had to admit to himself that he _was_ lost, rather than simply 'exploring.' At first- when there had still been enough light in the tunnels to see by- he had tried to keep track of the various twists and turns and offshoots in the narrow fissure through the rocks. But the tunnel kept branching and it wasn't long before he had completely lost his bearings; what's more, the further he travelled from the main cave the more the already dim light had faded, until he could no longer see his hand in front of his face.

He still hadn't turned back, though. He was too stubborn for that. Besides, going back felt wrong in a way he couldn't quite explain. Somehow Sonic _knew_ that if he pressed on there would be something worthwhile at the end, a way out of the caves or... something else. More than just a childish hunch, some instinct was drawing him further into the maze- and rightly or wrongly, the young hedgehog always trusted his instincts. So he'd carried on even after the darkness rendered his eyes useless, every other sense straining and alert for the faintest signal- ears perked and swivelling at the slightest drip or echo. With a guiding hand resting on the tunnel wall, he could feel through his glove that the damp stone was rough in most places and smooth in others, although whether that was due to the action of water or more of the ancient carvings he had no idea.

And he had quickly figured out that the air felt and smelled different whenever he passed another branch in the tunnel. Usually he took the path where the air seemed fresher, or where he could feel it moving against his fur; remembering how the heroes of his films and comics always found their way out of places like this by following a breeze from outside. Sometimes though he couldn't tell and took a guess; again letting instinct guide him in choosing the path that 'felt' right. At first it was like a game, enthusiasm blinding him to any real danger that he might be in.

But after this had gone on for- well, he'd lost track, so it must have been a while- it began to feel like less of a game. As the initial excitement of discovery wore off, a nagging feeling of anxiety began to twist in the pit of his stomach- spreading slowly but inexorably, like the chill that was gradually creeping into him from the wet fur plastered cold and heavy against his skin. The little hedgehog shivered slightly, becoming more and more aware of just _how _cold he was... his muscles starting to ache dully from it as his earlier burnout began to make itself felt again, now that reality was overtaking adrenaline. The darkness pressed in on him, reminding him of just how narrow and cramped these tunnels were; he couldn't spread his arms without touching walls on either side. Was it narrower than it had been a moment before? Maybe...

Sonic stopped walking, a hand tightening against the rock as his eyes stared blindly ahead and then behind as he twisted to 'look' over his shoulder. He hated small spaces. They didn't bother him too much though, so long as he knew he could get out.

And he'd suddenly become aware he had no idea how he was going to do that. Nor for that matter, the slightest clue as to where under the Zone he was. The realisation hit like a bucket of cold water to the face: he was lost, and what's more he couldn't see a thing.

"Oh yeah... really good idea there, Sonic..." he muttered, trying to embolden himself with the sound of his own voice- which didn't really help since it only sounded small and uncertain in the dark.

Why hadn't he seen it sooner? Well- because he was Sonic, more than anything else, but it was almost like something had drawn him down here. His breath hitched in his chest, quills rising and bristling... the tunnels seemed endless, how the heck was he going to find his way out now? For all he knew he could have wandered into the Labyrinth Zone already. Vague memories of being trapped somewhere that were closely tied with his fear of drowning began to push and prickle in the back of his mind, before he savagely shoved them back.

"...Wimp." A sharp hiss at the darkness. The young hedgehog took a deep breath and had to remind himself that he was Sonic and, as such, he could handle anything the world decided to throw at him. Standing here frozen and panicking about it was not going to do anyone any good, it wouldn't help him get out of here- and what's more, it would be letting Lance and Brindle win.

No way was that ever happening. Sonic straightened, nodded to himself and started walking again. There had to be an exit around here somewhere... it wasn't like there were _really _any pirates or monsters down here, right? Right. Just a stupid cave. Boring cave. Yawn.

Not that it stopped him from being tense as a coiled spring now as he felt his way along the narrow, damp-smelling stone tunnel.

And suddenly felt a feather-light touch against his shoulder.

…...

**A/N: ….aaaaanyone still following? If you've had the patience to keep up with my hiatuses of death and are reading this now, thank you. Seriously, you are the meaning of awesome. ^_^ *hugs***


	9. Discovery

**A/N: This fic is going on a bit, huh.  
**

**Sorry for the long wait. I've been trying to create a chapter buffer and there's this thing called Nanowrimo... **

**Well, fair to say there are several thousand more words of this fic waiting to be sorted into chapters now. In the meantime though, here's a little christmas present for anyone who might still be reading this... *hearts*  
**

…

.

**Chapter 9**

.

_...What is that phrase the younger generation uses? 'Sheer dumb luck?' That is certainly one way of looking at it. Sheer dumb luck that this butterfly was stepped on and that one was not. Or that this fledgeling bird tumbled out of the nest into a berry bush, and that one into the jaws of a cat..._

_They might call it luck. I call it evolution at work. _Is _it luck, even, that knack for survival against all odds- or is it something else? Senses that are that little bit sharper? Instinct? Some subconscious cue that others lack?_

_Those things I do have a say in, at least to some extent. The rest is down to them. _

[Archive file fragment #3495, incomplete (encrypted)]

...

Somewhere in the recesses of the stone fissure's ceiling, a thick ribbon of old spider silk finally gave in to the effects of time and damp; one end of the tangle of strands parting from the rock and dropping to dangle into the narrow tunnel. Weighted with dust and small particles of debris, the brittle clump swung gently from side to side for a few moments before gradually slowing and stopping.

Not that anyone saw this minor disruption to the stillness of the cave, it being pitch dark. Still, by cave standards it was quite the event. On the wall nearby, the half-inch long blind spider responsible for the silk tangle- or at least one of its descendants- scuttled across the ceiling towards the web and then froze in anticipation against the rock, feeling the vibrations in the silk through her delicate front feet. There may have been a tiny glimmer of hope in her little arachnid mind that maybe a fellow cave-dweller had stumbled into the web and would provide a meal that could last several days. She didn't move any further yet, though. Spiders- especially denizens of near-lifeless tunnels where one might not see a meal in months- were very good at waiting.

After some time in which no more vibrations to indicate a struggling insect were felt, the spider relaxed and quietly returned to her previous perch. Even if she were capable of it, there was probably little disappointment. She was used to lying in wait; and with food as scarce as it was there was no point in wasting energy on a false alarm.

It was just as well. What stumbled into the dangling clump of strands was far too large a creature for even the biggest spider here to catch and eat, and what's more would be deadly to any eight-legged cave denizen brave or foolish enough to try.

.

Sonic felt something brush against his fur and froze, instantly, breath catching in his throat as all his spines stood on end.

Feathery little legs, tapping against his shoulder. That was what it felt like. Little feet feeling around, sensing his pulse and the best place to sink fangs and pump venom into his bloodstream. The darkness had rendered him blind, but he could picture it clearly enough in his mind: eight spindly, knobbly legs, supporting a bulbous body and a head with sharp fangs stretched wide to strike and cold glittering eyes...

_It's just a spider. It's just a spider. Don't be such a baby, Sonic... just brush it off..._

The teenager's eyes, already useless, squeezed shut as a hand lifted slowly towards his shoulder. Normally he wouldn't be this bad, but his nerves were already on edge with how dark and claustrophobic it was down here and maybe the young hedgehog had seen a few _too _many horror movies lately...

"...I'm not letting a stupid spider get to me... I'm Sonic. I'm braver than this..." he muttered to himself, tensing to flick the 'spider' off his shoulder. The movement shifted the clump of webbing though, causing it to swing across onto the back of his neck...

"I'm... Oh Chaosit's_moving-_"

The real spider above _did _move, at that point. It scurried away into the deepest crevice it could find, terrified by the sudden yelp and flurry of motion from the huge, scary mammal below. Sonic, picturing a giant arachnid skittering to perch right at the base of his spine- where he was sure a well-placed bite would finish him off _instantly-_ had suddenly broken free of his paralysis and found his legs had taken on a life of their own; before he could even think anything beyond 'GET IT OFF' they had instinctively bolted, sending him running wildly and blindly deeper into the tunnels.

.

Sonic had no way of knowing how much distance he covered or how long he kept running, slamming painfully into corners and spinning around often enough that he had no idea what direction he was even heading in anymore. By the time his brain caught up with his legs he'd completely lost his bearings; by the time he was actually able to _stop, _it was a moot point because the tunnel took that moment to do it for him.

"Guh-!" The little hedgehog grunted explosively as his shoulder slammed into rock hard enough that stars flashed behind his eyes for a few seconds. Spun around, he automatically flung out an arm to catch himself and found a wall where there shouldn't have been one- a painful tingle shooting down his forearm as his elbow hit the stone with a crack. Momentum brought the rest of him up against yet another wall, a little cry jerking out of him at the impacts and the sudden surge of panic.

Wherever his flailing hands landed there seemed to be stone. Trapped. He was trapped with rock walls on all sides and spiders and no way out-

_-Get a grip! Idiot!_

That inner voice could shout as much as it liked, but the sudden panic that had taken over would not release its hold on him yet. Sonic struggled, lashing out and staring around blindly in search of a way out as his chest heaved with increasingly frenzied breaths. Until both hands and his back quills found the same rough wall; something to ground himself against as he slumped into it a little, panting.

"...I'm okay, I'm okay..." He repeated to himself, ears flattened and heart pounding wildly. Gripping the rock with one hand, the other- still tingling from the knock to his elbow- brushed rapidly over his shoulders and neck. No spider- nothing but a little grit in his wet fur here and there.

Sonic forced himself to take a deep, shaky breath. He'd been lost in caves before, he told himself firmly. Okay, he'd never ventured into any this dark or narrow before. Okay, this was uncharted territory. But it wasn't any different really. He'd got out safely every other time, he just had to feel his way around... retrace his steps back, if he couldn't get out this way. Somehow. No such thing as impossible, right...? His searching hands fluttered across the rock, finding resistance to either side as well as at his back... even the ceiling was close enough to touch. A dead end? Or just a cul-de-sac?

Groaning as the pain from his slamming into the rock began to make itself felt over the surge of adrenaline, the little hedgehog slid down the wall to sit with a soft thump- catching his breath and trying to gather himself.

"Ahahah... at... at least nobody was around to see that..." he smoothed a shaky hand back over his forehead and his damp, folded ears. "It's okay. Can't have been that many branches in the tunnel... didn't run that far. If I got in, I can get back out... easy... yeah."

He could still hear his heart pounding in his ears. Sonic knew the walls weren't really closing in, no matter what it felt like. Small spaces. Spiders. Water. It was as if the day had decided to make a list of his fears and tick them off one by one. Maybe it was okay to be a little... nervous, though. So long as he didn't let it get the better of him again. After all, Sonic the hedgehog was _much _too brave for that and adventures were allowed to be scary, right? Otherwise they wouldn't be proper adventures.

What was a little peril to a daring explorer like him... right?

Of course, the truth of it was that the daring explorer, in his moment of instinctive panic, had utterly failed at keeping track of where he was. At least before he'd had some idea of the direction he was going in; now he'd lost his bearings totally and didn't have the faintest clue.

Stupid, he chided himself, the back of his head thudding against the wall as he flopped back against it, shuffling a bit to get his quills into a more comfortable position. All that for a stupid spider that may or may not even have existed? How old was he, six? Cold, tired and aching dully in a dozen places, Sonic closed his eyes, leaned his head back and grimaced while waiting for his breathing to slow down again. He'd rest here a minute or two and then, spiders be damned, he'd get out of here. Because there had to be a way out somewhere...

He took another calming breath- and stopped mid-inhale, brows furrowing.

"...huh?" The hedgehog's nose twitched. With his senses on edge as they were, for a moment he was sure he'd caught something over the cave's usual smell of dampness, stone and mildew.

Sniff.

Nothing...?

No, there was definitely a slight change in the air in this particular spot. Something out of place enough to be noticed, even if he couldn't quite identify it at first. Frowning, he snuffed at the air again, cold black nose picking up the faintest trace of...

...Oil? Metal?

It took a moment for him to recognise the smell, a combination of unnatural scents that had his muzzle wrinkling- but which he was becoming more and more familiar with. It was faint, but _not _his imagination. But why would he be able to smell _that _down here? Unless-

-Unless there was an exit nearby. Brown eyes opened, blinking into the blackness as the hedgehog grabbed a rocky protrusion and pulled himself upright, nose twitching frantically now to try and locate the source of the smell. Raising his head, he frowned, blinked again and rubbed at his eyes- did that patch of darkness above him seem more... grey than black? Or were his eyes just playing tricks from being in the dark so long? He squinted, before lifting a hand to wave in front of his face...

...And saw movement as his fingers passed between his eyes and that brighter splotch. So light _was _filtering through the low ceiling somehow... his hand moved, reaching up to where the light was seeping from and finding an edge among the rocks that seemed much too smooth and regular... feeling around, the edge seemed to be a raised lip curving in a wide arc, surrounding a perfectly flat area of ceiling, like... a circle... a drain cover? Had he been that close to the surface all along?

Sonic put his palms flat against the ceiling and pushed as hard as he could. The little hedgehog let out a grunt of effort as his battered muscles and aching elbow protested with dull stabs of pain, but the sound was quickly joined by a metallic scrape as something in the ceiling shifted.

"Gah-!" Sonic hissed, letting the cover drop back into place with a clatter as he quickly covered his eyes against a brilliant shaft of light from above, stinging and unexpected after spending so long in total darkness and bringing with it a waft of air that was thick with that strange smell. He didn't let it bother him for long, though. Squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head at the purple spots floating behind his eyelids, Sonic grinned.

"...Awesome. Guess I just had to trust my feet to get me out of here after all..."

…

A series of clangs echoed through the space above, a circular panel in the floor shuddering as Sonic struggled with it from underneath. After the third or fourth attempt the metal panel slid across slightly, letting a crescent of fresh air and light into the tunnels below. Dirty, gloved fingers appeared around the edge of the disc, pushing it aside, before gripping the edges of the revealed hole. With a lot of ungainly struggling and strained little noises of effort, an exhausted and grubby brown hedgehog hauled himself over the edge and flopped onto his stomach, eyes still shut tight against the glare and ears twitching in an attempt to get some idea of where he was.

"...ow..." Wincing, Sonic pushed himself onto hands and knees, and then into a sitting position where he rubbed at a sore shoulder and turned his head this way and that, wanting to know where he'd ended up- eyes repeatedly opening to slits before quickly closing again at the harsh light. After being in the tunnel his surroundings were now nothing more than a painful white glare; the light visible even through closed eyelids as a pinkish glow.

The first things he was aware of, then, were the smells and sounds of the place. Sonic knew immediately that wherever he had ended up was not outdoors. His ears twitched at chirps and beeps which were not made by any bird outside of a video game. Somewhere, a clock was ticking- no, several clocks, all slightly out of synch with each other. Odd. And there was a rhythmic mechanical squeaking, like a badly-oiled bicycle wheel.

The air was too still to be outside, only a little warmer than it had been in the tunnels and was loaded with a mixture of scents; now he was immersed in them he could recognise more than just the general oily smell and an acridity similar to what he'd been confronted with when Porker had opened the back of Sonic's broken television, exposing burnt electronics. Beneath it there was a kind of ozone smell like the air before a storm; and something else, too, much more familiar and unpleasant enough to have the little hedgehog sticking out his tongue at it. It was sort of like a...

...a ...mouldy cheese and onion sandwich?

Wherever he'd ended up, someone wasn't big on cleaning up after lunch.

"Ew..." Sonic grimaced- hypocritically, since he was familiar with Perfume of Forgotten Sandwich for a a reason- before curiosity compelled him to finally open his eyes. Or try to, anyway, squinting at the bright light and lifting a hand to peer through spread fingers. Eventually, his eyes began to adjust to the brightness and part of the floor came into focus- a round hole, the curve of a rusty metal disc off to one side and then letters in a heavy black font:

_EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY._

It _was _a manhole cover of some sort, with a recessed handle in the top and a plastic warning sticker.

"...Aw man, if I've ended up in a sewer or something..." a grumble. Although he was sure a sewer would be darker than this. And even smellier.

Sonic looked up, pupils contracted to pinpricks against the glare. And immediately gasped, blinking hard and shaking his head- because his eyes just had to be deceiving him. He rubbed at his eyes and looked again, staring around incredulously as he slowly clambered to his feet... this couldn't be real, right?

"No way..." Sonic breathed, an incredulous smile building at the corners of his mouth.

This wasn't a sewer, not by a long way. The space he was standing in was like nothing he had experienced before in real life, although he'd seen similar rooms in movies and computer games. Those had been just film sets though, or collections of pixels. This was reality.

Stepping away from the emergency hatch in the floor, Sonic could see that the place had once been another stone cavern- the ceiling, illuminated now by fluorescent strip lights, was made up of the same closely-fitted stone blocks as the ruins he had seen earlier. He wasn't really interested in the ceiling, though. What he could see of the walls and floor had been clad in metal panels, none of which quite matched in size or shape as if they had been scavenged from something else entirely. Electrical cables or varying thickness trailed across the floor, some taped down and others not, so that his footing was almost as treacherous as it had been in the tunnels. But the young hedgehog wasn't particularly interested in that, either; it was the contents of the room that had caught his attention- jerking an excited little bark of laughter out of him as he wandered through the space, ears perked with fascination.

Only having real experience of a small, rural village to go on, the only mental description Sonic could come up with for the place was a cross between a spaceship repair shop and a mad scientist's lab. Large, mysterious machines were recessed into walls and free standing on the floor, some beeping and blinking coloured lights at random intervals, others silent and inert. Long workshop-style tables were strewn with post-it notes, unidentifiable small tools, and equally unidentifiable bits of metal- and the source of the mouldy smell, a sandwich which had been abandoned after a single bite. The place had been occupied relatively recently, then...

The room was bigger than it seemed at first. There was so much clutter that it was practically a maze of machines and... what the teenager could only label junk, not knowing what any of it was supposed to do. Every time he navigated around one hulking metal obstruction, the workshop opened out even more and revealed more of its wonders- a section of wall covered in ticking clocks here, a large glass tube filled with slowly rotating golden rings there.

Sonic paused to stare at the rings almost longingly for a moment before moving on to frown confusedly at what seemed to be a large wheel-like machine set into a wall. It was spinning slowly, and was the source of that squeaking sound he'd noticed earlier. In it, like a hamster in a running wheel, something which resembled a motorised unicycle trundled along mindlessly. The young hedgehog's brows furrowed as he approached the wobbling, ridiculous looking thing, which was little more than a fat tyre with a blob of circuit boards and wiring and little spinning gears where a seat would have been. As if sensing him, it slowed its pace- promptly unbalancing itself and falling out of the running wheel with a loud clatter.

"Whoa!" Sonic jumped back before the thing could land on his foot, bumping into a table and sending a pile of assorted gadgetry and a small stack of coffee mugs crashing to the floor.

"...Oops..." Freezing like a statue- apart from his ears, which swivelled around wildly to catch any sound of someone coming to see what the commotion was about- he waited for a few moments. When nothing else happened he cautiously poked at the fallen contraption with a foot. The robotic thing rocked back and forth from the force of the prod and its tyre spun uselessly, but other than that it did nothing.

"Huh. Weird..." Sonic shook his head and left the thing where it was, eager to explore the rest of the lab. "Either I've found Motley's secret stash or... I don't even know... heh!" The hedgehog bit back another excited chuckle as he navigated through this technological wonderland. This wasn't like all the little glimpses of something exciting he'd been catching recently, things like the ammonite shell which could be too easily dismissed as nothing special really... no, this place was real and tangible and there was noway anyone could deny how strange and amazing it all was. The small Mobian smiled to himself, unconsciously puffing out his chest as he daydreamed a little- Sonic the Hedgehog had discovered something incredible beneath Emerald Hill, he thought, and this time nobody could say he was imagining things.

But had this... this _mad scientist's hideout_ really been just under his feet all along? What was the point of all this stuff?

...Where was the mad scientist?

Another frown. That's what he'd mentally pegged Doc as being, before he realised the disguised 'heron' could be something even stranger. And that now familiar mechanical smell had hung around him, too... that couldn't be coincidence, right...?

The young hedgehog's mind brimmed with unanswered questions, and as yet he'd been unable to identify any of the strange devices around him. Well, apart from the large, incongruous and battered-looking refrigerator and microwave he'd spotted through a door that seemed to lead into a little kitchen nook. That was so ordinary that it gave him pause, until he reasoned that aliens or crazy inventors or whatever probably needed to eat too. As evidenced by the mouldy sandwich he'd noticed earlier, which was still spreading its smelly legacy throughout the lab.

Seeing the little kitchenette also reminded him that really he was trespassing somewhere he probably shouldn't be, without permission- but then, when had needing permission ever stopped Sonic? He was too excited and curious to really worry about that. Besides, it wasn't as if he'd broken in on purpose or something. Strangely though, even as fascinated as he was by the bleeping and flashing machines, he didn't give them more than a quick look-over. Not even the robot unicycle thing or the collection of rings had kept his attention for very long. Sonic was more than just distracted- just like the instinct that had guided him here in the first place, the hedgehog somehow knew that the room contained something far more interesting than even the eccentric, high-tech devices surrounding him.

Porker might have tutted at him for wasting the opportunity to examine the machines more closely- if he'd had the courage to venture into the caves in the first place, that is. But Sonic would have ignored him anyway. He could feel that pull again, like a faint tugging sensation in his chest and an itch in the back of his head. It was subtle, unlike that night by the Star Post where he'd barely been able to control his feet- but definitely there, and somehow more insistent than even the bundle of rings in the lass cylinder had been.

There was something in here. Something _important, _and he needed to find it.

It didn't take long. Rounding a tall metallic box that had a tangle of thick cables at its base like the roots of a tree, Sonic found that the room suddenly narrowed, the walls of the cave reinforced with metal to form a wide, armour-plated archway leading into another room. Inside, reaching from floor to ceiling and wall to wall, was a machine like nothing Sonic had seen anywhere else in the lab- or for that matter anywhere else in his life.

It was what that machine housed, though, that had caught Sonic's eye and had him stepping mesmerised through the archway and into the smaller chamber. The spines on the back of his neck rose and bristled as a shiver passed through him, not only because the air was noticeably colder this close to the device.

"...No... flipping way..." Sonic breathed. Unable to drag his eyes away from the sight before him, he slowly folded into a sitting position in front of the machine.

Completely unaware that he was no longer alone.

...


	10. Kintobor

**A/N still here, still writing... real life is kind of mental at the moment though, so bear with me!**

**Chapter 10**

.

_The Mobians have a saying: 'chaos seeks chaos.' It is used in the same way as we would use 'birds of a feather flock together.'_

_From my studies of the Emeralds, I have long suspected that there was a more literal meaning behind this proverb._

[Archive file fragment #0053, incomplete. (encrypted)]

…

A constant, barely audible tone like the hum of a tuning fork filled the air, which seemed charged with the electric smell of ozone. Beneath Sonic's outstretched hand the cool, curved glass vibrated slightly as if constantly struggling not to allow the contents of the chamber to escape.

He hadn't been able to stop himself reaching out to place his palm flat against the glass cylinder. It just felt like the right thing to do. The tube rose nearly to the ceiling and was capped with a metal dome, and thick bundles of cable emerged from the centre and edges of this cap, spreading out like a spider's web and disappearing into panels in the ceiling. The wires vibrated as well, swaying slightly as whatever it was they were meant to carry flowed in and out of the glass chamber. Occasionally a little puff of cold white steam would drift up from where the cables attached to the ceiling or from the container itself.

This was the centrepiece of a machine which took up most of the space in the end chamber of the lab Sonic had found himself in. To either side metal bulkheads housed banks of lights and switches, monitor screens of varying sizes- some of which actually looked like old, repurposed televisions, which is in fact exactly what they were- all of which flickered with incomprehensible readouts, charts and graphs and screen upon screen of scrolling code. Underfoot, more thick cables snaked around in every direction. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the design of the machine on first glance- as if it had been added to piece by piece over time, growing into a metallic yet organic-looking sprawl of computer parts and segmented cables which enveloped and overgrew the pulsing containment chamber at its heart.

And yet, when one looked more closely there was a strange symmetry to that jumble of technology. The constant twitch and hum of the cables, the way lights continually bloomed and dimmed in flickering patterns across every available surface, and most of all the overwhelming sense of power and energy that surrounded the thing and made the air feel strangely heavy- all this came together to give the impression that the machine was somehow alive. It was like a massive, hibernating animal, quiet but powerful and twitching in its sleep.

Normally Sonic would have been more impressed by the device, which resembled what he imagined would happen if it were possible to plant a battery like a seed and let it grow. A lesser hedgehog might have been intimidated by something which looked like it belonged in Dr. Frank N. Stein's lab, and might for all he knew be a death laser or a bomb or any of those other world-destroying contraptions you often saw in science fiction movies. But Sonic's attention had been instantly and irrevocably focused on the central container and the objects floating impossibly inside, the rest of his surroundings seeming to fade away- nowhere near as important as the sight in front of him.

The hedgehog's palm wiped slowly across the glass, removing a film of clinging condensation and revealing the gemstones in their full glory.

The tube contained five translucent hexagonal stones. Each about the size of his hand, each a different colour- although they all glowed from within with the same fierce light. Sonic swallowed convulsively, brown spines bristling as he felt that strange pulling sensation again. He couldn't understand it, but somehow the way those stones glowed was exactly what grabbing a gold ring _felt _like. All wild energy and heat and potential for... for...

_Anything. With these things you could do anything._

The thought came out of nowhere, uncoiling slowly in the back of his mind. He could almost feel the energy, too, resonating in unison with the glass under his hand- but it was just the barest echo, as if the barrier was stifling it. It was like when he tried to hit top speed without rings; he could _feel _the potential there, but it was locked away somehow. As if something was...

_...Incomplete..._

Transfixed by the stones, scattered thoughts swam in the hedgehog's mind. Something felt wrong, strained, _missing _somehow and he wasn't even sure whether the unnerving sensation was coming from within himself, the tube, or both. He couldn't pull away from it though. Sonic's gaze had fixed on one gem in particular.

The other four shifted around it, spinning in slow orbits around each other. At first their movements through the glass tube seemed random, but after a while a pattern became noticeable.

The stones were paired. A bright amber stone and a deep flame orange one circled each other- not in a lazy drift, but in an oddly strained orbit as if attracting and repelling each other at the same time. The same tension was visible in the locked orbit of the blood-red and amethyst gems that glittered nearby.

The fifth stone floated alone, turning slowly on its axis as it circled the perimeter of the tube. It was a deep sapphire colour, like the sky at dusk. Its inner glow was the scorching defiant blue of a gas flame.

Even in his dazed state, Sonic would have recognised that colour anywhere.

…

He had always been somewhat lax about security, honestly. But then again, when your home is naturally located in a place that should have been both impenetrable and undetectable, security is naturally not at the forefront of one's mind.

The individual known around the village simply as Doc had thought his own minor precautions plus the natural defences would be enough to keep the curious out. So at first he was merely surprised to see the little blinking warning light that indicated that the lab had been breached- thinking it was simply another malfunction. But within a few moments he found himself raising eyebrows at, and then following, a meandering trail of muddy smears and little puddles of water through the middle of his lab. Not knowing what to expect- some small animal or rodent from within the cave system, perhaps- he paused, blinking at the sight of a bedraggled figure that was dwarfed by the machinery around it.

He'd sealed all the entrances into the cave system that he could find, and had thought they were well hidden enough that no Mobian could find them. Apparently, though, he hadn't reckoned on one small, scruffy brown hedgehog.

Very small and very scruffy, he amended, eyeing the young Mobian who was practically sitting in his own little puddle of muddy water. And shivering, too, which wasn't surprising since that was necessarily the coldest part of the lab and the hedgehog would have had to have found his way through a sprawling maze of freezing caves to get here. But although he looked a mess, this was undoubtedly the very same hedgehog who he had spoken to earlier that day.

Well, Doc thought, he _had_ assumed he would be running into Sonic again. Just not quite this soon. He shook his head, giving a wry little sigh. Well, that saved him having to make the decision of whether to avoid the hedgehog or approach him again...

After a while, he cleared his throat softly, trying to get the little Mobian's attention.

…

Sonic immediately knew where he had seen that blue gem before. Just by the colouring and the tingling feeling he was getting from sitting in front of the glass tube, he knew this had to be the same glowing object he had glimpsed Doc holding up on the Star Post hill. Tilting his head a little, Sonic tapped lightly against the cold glass. Did the stone react, spinning more quickly? Or was that his imagination? He wasn't sure...

Mesmerised as he was, he barely acknowledged the little _ahem_ from behind him. Instead he just frowned, slightly irritated by the interruption . And by that barrier between him and the gems. It was almost as if they were calling out to him and he couldn't quite make out what they were saying through the glass...

"Rather hypnotic, aren't they?" the voice continued behind him. Less easy to ignore this time because it was accompanied by a light tap against his shoulder, which finally had Sonic jerking out of his trance- gasping sharply and trying to jump to his feet to face the owner of the voice. Only with as tired and shaken as he was it didn't quite work out that way, the hedgehog stumbling backwards- where he would have ended up leaning against the glass chamber if not for the hands that caught at his shoulders to steady him.

"Easy, there-"

"-Whoa- hey, let go!" he exclaimed, wriggling free and quickly backing out of the way. His eyes tracked upwards, the young hedgehog blinking as he snapped back to reality; gradually becoming aware of his surroundings again, and the abnormally tall figure now standing in front of him- a figure wearing very familiar cold-weather gear...

"I dunno who you really are and what you're doing in here but I'm gonna find out and... whuh..."

Sonic immediately blurted, but his rapid-fire outburst quickly trailed off. His mouth dropped open in shock as his eyes finally found the taller being's face.

"...what the... dude...you really are an alien..." Sonic blinked, staring. It was definitely Doc; he was still wearing the now familiar padded jacket, trousers and snow boots. But the green scarf now dangled loosely around his shoulders and he'd taken off the gloves, hat and skiing goggles.

Not to mention his beak. It now hung around his neck on a piece of elastic, and was rather obviously made of plastic. Not a heron, then. Not even a bird at all.

In fact Sonic wasn't quite sure exactly what he was looking at. The face revealed was like nothing he had seen in real life, only the little wire-rimmed glasses being at all familiar. Clearly it wasn't the case that Doc had been wearing a helmet that night on the hill. That was just the way his head was shaped- an upended egg with a pointed chin and features that looked a few sizes too small by Sonic's Mobian standards. There was something both ape-like and pig-like about the tall creature's flattish face, although his mouth was small and what passed for his nose was just a little wedge in a sea of bald, almost shiny pink skin.

He seemed to be trying to make up for his woeful lack of fur with a spectacular moustache that Joe the walrus would have been proud of, though, Sonic noticed. It, along with the tuft of frizzy hair that clung behind each of the smallest ears he had ever seen, was a flaming orange colour.

"Oh, dear..." Doc sighed, looking a little embarrassed- if Sonic was reading his alien features right, anyway. He gave a little rueful smile and pushed his glasses further up that meagre excuse for a muzzle. "This could have been so much easier if I'd had time to prepare... My apologies, Sonic. You've never seen a human before, have you? I didn't mean to frighten you-"

"I'm not scared!" Sonic blurted out instantly. Under other circumstances, the muddy little hedgehog's posture and expression would have been comical. The look of defiance on his face would have been more fitting for a fully-grown tiger, but on the small bristling hedgehog it made him look more like an angry kitten. "What's a human?"

Doc noted Sonic's expression and replied disarmingly. "Oh of course not. And that's my species- _homo sapiens,_ actually. Just like you're a hedgehog: _Erinaceus europaeus._" Again, the human adjusted his glasses, small blue-grey eyes blinking curiously behind them. "Or at least, something close to that. I understand with Mobians the a lot of the subspecies distinctions have been lost over time."

Sonic just blinked at him, mystified.

"Dude, I don't speak geek! And you didn't answer my question. Are you like... trying to invade and eat everyone's brains or what?"

It was the human's turn to blink at that, his face going blank for a moment or two. Then he chuckled, sounding sheepish and confused more than anything else.

"Eat everyone's... oh my, no. Why would I want to do that? And no, I'm not an alien. Well, not exactly. My ancestors might have come from... shall we say elsewhere, but I was born on Mobius just like you."

Sonic's eyes narrowed. "Well if you're a Mobian, how come I've never seen one of you human guys before?" The hedgehog demanded haughtily, ignoring the fact that he'd barely come across a handful of the sentient races on the planet in his short life. The lab made him feel like a fish out of water- and that only made him all the more determined to stand his ground, show this 'human' guy just how tough he was and get to the bottom of this!

"And what about these gems and all this- this stuff?" he waved a hand, indicating the humming machine with its gemstones behind him and the lab in general. "This mad scientist stuff? You guys are always trying to take over the world or something, building a death ray or whatever... what's it all _do?_"

"Now now... slow down a little, Sonic. There are only so many questions I can answer at once after all," Doc replied, looking slightly overwhelmed and suspecting (correctly) that this wouldn't be the last time he would have to field a barrage of questions from the teenager. Still, he had to think for a moment about the best way to go about explaining. How much _could _he actually explain, anyway? And perhaps more importantly, how could he do it in such a way that a youngster could understand?

"You haven't seen a human before because there are only a few of us. And we tend to keep to ourselves." Inwardly, he winced at the vague answer. But really, it was the only thing he could tell Sonic... he was already breaking the non-interference rules _badly _by being here and talking to the hedgehog at all.

But then, he'd been breaking the rules for a long time already, hadn't he?

Doc lifted a thin hand to tap the plastic beak dangling around his neck. "That's why I tend to disguise myself. I'd only alarm people with my appearance, and that would make my work... difficult."

The question was, now what did he do? He'd expected to at least have a little time to think this over- not to come home and find Sonic was already there waiting for him. He thoughtfully smoothed fingers across his moustache where being trapped under a scarf had ruffled it, then gave that characteristic sigh again and shook his head. He hadn't wanted to make that decision on the spot like this, but now he was confronted with the small, wet hedgehog who was currently eyeing him suspiciously he realised there was only really one course of action here...

"Look... we've got off to a bad start here. I am a scientist, but I'm not actually mad," Again, that rueful little chuckle. "At least, I'd hope not. Your brain is completely safe, Sonic, don't worry. My name is Dr. Ovi Kintobor, and as for what I'm doing... well, after you made the effort to find me, I think I at least owe you an explanation..."

"Kintobor? I dunno, that sounds alien enough to me. What kinda weird name is that? And seriously, explain away. I'm all ears." Sonic actually smirked a bit as he interrupted, although there was still wariness in those dark brown eyes. It was diminishing slowly, though. Despite Kintobor's strange appearance and the humming machines all around, he gave the impression of being pretty harmless, bumbling even. It was the same impression Sonic had got from him at Motley's stall.

...Well, there _were _good mad scientists as well as evil ones, Sonic said to himself. The absent-minded kind who built time machines out of cars and awesome stuff like that... maybe Kintobor was one of those. He'd already proved to be the sort of person who left forgotten mouldy sandwiches lying around and that didn't seem like a particularly supervillain sort of thing to do. Unless you asked your nose.

"Not that it was _that _much effort to get in here. Seriously, man... considering you're some sort of high tech outer space type guy, your security kinda sucks. Aren't you supposed to have guard robots and laser traps and all that stuff?" The hedgehog folded his arms, shifted his weight onto one hip and tapped a foot- unaware of how silly it made him look in his bedraggled, cobweb-draped state. He was feeling a little cocky again now, wonder and excitement and nervousness combining into a heady mix. Although it felt unreal this was actually happening- he seemed to have fallen right into a comic book! And so he couldn't help but brag a little. While not mentioning, of course, how he'd found the entrance to the cave by accident and that whole spider business...

Kintobor's wispy eyebrows shot skywards at the little display, the human apparently at a loss at what to say to that. His sudden laugh was louder than before, but not mocking at all- just gently amused, creases deepening at the corners of his eyes as he chuckled.

"Oh, my... well I suppose I _could_ have done! But there was really no need for that, was there? I only sealed up the caves to stop people and animals wandering in and getting trapped. The tunnels are perfect for ventilation but they are really quite the maze, I wouldn't want anyone getting hurt down there..." Sobering, he shook his head. "You were very lucky, Sonic. Without a proper schematic you could easily have taken a wrong turn and... well, I don't want to think about that."

Kintobor frowned. Then his eyes widened a bit, belatedly noticing that Sonic wasn't even carrying anything- before he continued, sounding slightly horrified now.

"...Never mind a schematic, do you even have a torch? However did you manage?"

At that, Sonic just smirked even more. Shrugging lightly, he idly examined one of his dirty gloves and picked a bit of grit off a fingertip.

"Didn't need one. I just followed my nose and here I am! I've been in caves before, y'know. It's not as hard as you think for someone like me, some flimsy wire grating and a couple of tunnels aren't gonna keep _me_ away."

"...So I see..." Kintobor replied, eyebrows still pointed skywards and a small smirk of his own tugging at the corner of his mouth. The little hedgehog was clearly laying on the ego as thickly as he possibly could, the façade of bravado rolling off him in waves. It was endearing in a way. The scientist didn't know much about children, but suspected that really Sonic was probably nervous as well as exhausted- the latter being particularly obvious, since he looked more like a drowned rat than a hedgehog at the moment- but nevertheless, he seemed to have far too much attitude for that skinny body to contain.

Not to mention a lot of luck on his side... if it was luck...

"Seems like you trust your instincts, eh?"

"Haven't failed me yet..." A grin.

"Hmm." Kintobor rubbed his chin, thoughtfully eyeing the hedgehog and then glancing at the humming machine behind him which he'd been so fascinated with. Sonic seemed to have appeared every which way the scientist turned over the past few days... _could _it be coincidence? Or was something else at work here? It was hard to believe that Sonic had negotiated the tunnels and ruins beneath the zone and found his way into the lab by sheer blind luck alone...

"Hey! Mobius calling alien dude, can you hear me?" Only when the impatient little quip from Sonic came- along with a handwave which would have passed before Kintobor's eyes if the teenager had been anywhere near tall enough to reach- did he realise that he'd been staring into space for a good few seconds, lost in thought. "Don't zone out on me, okay? Explanations, remember?"

"Oh. Ah... yes. Of course." Kintobor cleared his throat. "Sorry. Not used to company, you see... I was telling you about the lab, wasn't I?" He paused, looking over his restless little visitor for a moment. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. Sonic was here now and there was no helping that; he doubted he'd be able to shake him off so long as he stayed in Emerald Hill either...

He sighed. "All right... but before I can do that, there are two things I need to ask. It's really... quite important actually."

At that, Sonic rolled his eyes a bit- giving the human a glare that was only half joking.

"Doc, if I hear the words 'experiments' or 'brains' in there, I am gonna be outta here _so_ fast..."

"My dear boy, I think you might have seen far too many horror movies. Like I said, I'm not that sort of scientist. If you do want to- get outta here as you put it, the door is right over there," he moved out back through the metal arch, prompting Sonic to follow him out of the alcove- oddly reluctantly and casting a last lingering glance at the gemstones inside the glass tube, which wasn't lost on Doc- and pointed towards a set of very wide double doors across the lab, a little box attached to the frame glowing with a steady green light. The exit was surrounded by a jumble of objects including more of the incomprehensible machines and something big and rounded that was covered with a tarpaulin, its shape somehow familiar to the hedgehog. Looking more out of place than anything else, though, was an old-fashioned wooden coat rack standing beside the doors.

"Those doors lead to a ramp that comes out in an empty part of the zone. If you want to leave, I'm not going to stop you," Doc continued disarmingly. Looking around at his lab, it was perfectly ordinary to him- but he could only imagine how strange and threatening it must seem to someone who hadn't seen anything like it before. Sonic put across a fearless impression but the human didn't doubt he was feeling some, somewhere. "Only I rather hope you don't before I've finished. That was the first thing I was going to ask, actually... I'm willing to tell you everything, but in return you need to promise not to let anyone know about me or where this place is. At least, not yet, not until I complete my project and it's ready to be brought into the public eye."

Kintobor's expression turned genuinely worried as he said that. Sonic was a curious little thing, he knew... hopefully that would keep the hedgehog from publicly unmasking him now that he was aware of his presence in the zone. That would be a disaster... He nervously rubbed his head, looking rather helpless.

"My work is rather... sensitive, as you'll understand once I explain things to you. If people find out about me it could cause a lot of problems." a hesitant, sheepish half chuckle. "The caves and ruins under the zone are perfect for me, I really don't want to have to relocate. Can you imagine moving all this equipment for a start?" Not to mention, he added silently, the trouble he'd be in if word somehow reached his own people about what he was doing down here...

Sonic quirked an eyebrow, glancing over the mounds of clutter all around.

"Yeeeeeah... and you'd never even get the bulldozer to fit in here." He muttered, shaking his head. The place was more of a mess than his bedroom was.

The brown hedgehog paused to think for a moment. He could imagine how people might react to knowing there was a vast underground lab beneath their feet... or rather, he could picture the terrified flailing if someone as nervous as Porker did. The guy had a point. But still...

He frowned slightly, before nodding to himself and straightening as his entire demeanour turned deadly serious.

"As for whether or not I'm gonna tell anyone you're down here... well, that kinda depends on what you're up to, doesn't it?" Brown eyes fixed steadily on the human's face, searching for any hint of deception. He didn't think he'd find any, but still... "If it's like... dangerous or gonna damage the zone or something, I can't exactly keep it to myself."

Kintobor blinked at the sudden mood shift. And then, surprisingly, broke into a broad, genuine smile as he nodded at the hedgehog.

"I'd like you to trust me, but then I have been going round in disguise and leading you on quite the chase- so I can understand I'm going to have to earn it. You seem to have a good sense of right and wrong, which is admirable." Plus quite an ego, he added silently as Sonic visibly stood a little bit taller at the comment. "That sounds fair to me. I'll let you make up your own mind, but I can assure you my research here is meant only for the good of the planet. If all goes well I very much doubt anyone will even notice I'm here at all."

Sonic eyed the human, ears flicking as he thought it over. Kintobor's face was hard to read with its small features, but the look in his eyes definitely struck a chord. The man _did _look like he was up to something. But it was more like he'd been caught with his hand in a cookie jar and was pleading with Sonic not to tell anybody and get him in trouble, rather than anything really sinister. It was an expression Sonic himself had been caught with any number of times, and he had to smirk a little at it.

"...All right, that sound like a deal to me. So what's the other really important thing?"

Kintobor watched him for a moment, then gave a little heh and motioned for the hedgehog to follow him back into the main part of the lab, heading for the little side room with the fridge. He glanced over his shoulder, smiling again.

"Well, my second question is how do you like your tea? I don't know about you, but after this afternoon I think I really need some."

Sonic's face went utterly blank.

"...Tea? That's your vitally important question?"

The human stopped, giving Sonic a look of shock that was almost comical. He tutted.

"...Sonic, you have a lot to learn."


	11. ROCC

**A/N Wordy chapter is wordy, but necessary. I hope people aren't getting bored... **

**25/03/2011 update: Also, fixed an error. Apparently half a sentence went astray in there... *blush*  
**

**.**

**Chapter 11**

...

As it turned out the answer to Dr. Kintobor's second vitally important question was a resounding 'not interested.' While the tea stood forgotten, Sonic was far more impressed with the sandwich he was offered, and even then, disappointed to discover that it was perfectly ordinary bread and cheese from the Emerald Hill market- and not space bread or something.

Although Sonic immediately discovered that he was famished after the day's misadventures, the young hedgehog couldn't really concentrate on that, either. But Kintobor refused to answer any of Sonic's questions or talk about anything other than the weather until he had eaten something- and had finished his own tea, which apparently was very important indeed to the human.

Kintobor even clucked disapprovingly over the various bumps and scrapes on the hedgehog, threatening to get out the first aid kit. Sonic shrugged off that suggestion and insisted he was fine as usual, which earned him yet more disapproving but helpless looks as the teenager wasn't having any of it.

In short, the scientist was behaving just like... every other adult that Sonic had ever met. Which was incredibly surreal. There he was, having tea and being lectured about how he needed to get some food in him and clean up, which was normal... but this was happening while he was perched up on a stool that he'd had to _climb _because it had been modified for a creature over twice his height, was surrounded by devices and gadgets that would have looked less out of place in a special effects studio, and the adult lecturing him was in fact a strange being who may or may not be the descendant of an alien.

Oh, and there were magic floating gemstones, too.

It was almost too much for the young hedgehog's mind to take in all at once. He could only imagine what Johnny and Porker were going to make of it... oh... but he couldn't actually tell them, could he?

He couldn't really be too annoyed about that right now, though. This was amazing enough that even losing his bragging rights was kind of worth it... plus now he could look at people like Lance and honestly say that his life was now _a heck of a lot more interesting_ than theirs. Well, it had been already! But now he knew something they didn't...

In the end, Sonic's fidgeting and constant questions won out, cutting Kintobor's tea break a little short. The now fed and reasonably dry hedgehog found himself standing in front of that big machine again, watching the stones inside turn in their ceaseless orbits of each other. He glanced across at Kintobor, who had rid himself of the remaining snow gear to reveal more ordinary, if baggy clothing underneath, and had put on a white lab coat that only emphasised how tall and thin he was. The effect was less dramatic than the heron disguise, but just as appropriate for the mad scientist Sonic was still sure he had to be.

"So what the heck is it?" He asked.

"You seemed rather interested in this machine earlier. That's rather fitting, actually, since it's the most important device in the lab." Kintobor waved a hand to indicate the contraption and banks of computer screens which took up most of the space in the room. There was a distinct note of pride in his voice as he looked over the humming, condensation-speckled tangle of machinery with the five glowing stones at its centre. "This is the R.O.C.C. It's the heart of my work here and the reason for everything you see around you."

"Rock? Is that because of those gems in it?" Sonic frowned. "Guess you have a thing for weird names, Doc..." he moved a little closer to the machine, although he was hardly aware of doing it- his feet moving of their own accord. Kintobor watched carefully, a thoughtful frown crossing his face; the hedgehog couldn't seem to take his eyes off that central chamber...

"It stands for Retro Orbital Chaos Compressor. And those aren't just gemstones; I don't know if the name means anything to you, but-"

"They're Chaos Emeralds." Sonic interrupted. "Aren't they?" He tore his eyes away long enough to glance over his shoulder, a searching, incredulous look on his face. The thought had been prodding the back of his mind for a while now. And hearing the name of the machine... he couldn't imagine that those stones could be anything but the legendary Emeralds.

Kintobor looked surprised, but he nodded, eyebrows lifting.

"You've heard of them, then. Tell me, what do you know about the Emeralds?"

Sonic went back to staring into the glass chamber, eyes wide and his voice taking on a faraway tone.

"Just what I've seen in films and stuff... the legend is there were either six or seven of them and they had the power to make the impossible happen." the hedgehog smiled a little at that. He'd always liked that idea, although he wasn't sure what sort of things the Emeralds were supposed to make possible. It varied from story to story. But still, the thought of it tied in with his personal belief that there was no such thing as impossible.

"Are these really some of the Emeralds? They're smaller than I thought. And not green." He had to ask, although something in him winced at his own question. Deep down he knew exactly what those five little stones were and there was this feeling of awe and reverence that he'd never experienced in his life. For once his tone had dropped to something hushed and hesitant, which Kintobor seemed to pick up on, his own voice softening.

"Fantasy and reality are two different things sometimes, Sonic. As I'm sure you're beginning to understand." A pause. "But those are indeed five of the Chaos Emeralds. There are known to be six altogether- although many of the old legends mention seven, and some as many as fourteen, but that might just be exaggeration."

"The reality is that the Chaos Emeralds contain a highly volatile, but powerful source of energy... I have been working to harness this Chaos Energy for the benefit of Planet Mobius, and researching its unusual effects on organic and inorganic matter-" he cut off at the puzzled glance he got from the hedgehog, "...Ah, I mean its effects on inanimate objects and the living environment."

"...Are they dangerous?" Sonic frowned a little.

"So long as they remain in the containment chamber, no. They do have a tendency to react with one another, but the machines in this room are keeping them safe and stable..." Kintobor hedged.

"Cool..." the hedgehog breathed, reaching out again to lay a hand against the glass. He could feel it resonating beneath gloved fingers as the stabilizing machinery did its work.

"Well, actually yes; the temperature inside the chamber is kept at level just below... oh. Never mind..." Kintobor trailed off, sounding a little sheepish as he realised that probably hadn't been what he had meant... the human wasn't exactly up to date on slang. Not to mention that the diminutive hedgehog wasn't really listening, anyway, the science talk going completely over his head. Kintobor thought back, trying to remember if he'd been this awed by his first look at the Emeralds. Probably not quite, but then he'd actually known of their existence at the time... Sonic hadn't, and he'd quickly slipped back into the same almost trance like state he'd been in when Kintobor had found him. Interesting. Maybe he just really liked shiny things. Or maybe it was something else...

"Heh... I used to be convinced these things were buried under the zone _somewhere. _Guess I was right..." Sonic murmured incredulously. Then he laughed, looking back long enough to give Kintobor a broad, mischievous grin. "I looked all over the place, dude! And they really were down here all along!"

"Man, people said I was nuts and everything. Ha! Shows what they know."

"Well, you were right on one count at least!" Kintobor couldn't help but smile back; the look on Sonic's face was infectious. "I found the yellow Emerald not far from here nearly ten years ago. As far as I know it's been in the Emerald Hill Zone for at least half a century, which is when their location was last recorded. Since then I've been able to recover the other four from various locations around the island- which was quite the challenge for some of them, I'll have to tell you the story sometime- and I've been trying to find out whether the seventh Emerald ever actually existed..."

Sonic nodded, slowly, the pieces slowly falling into place. His eyes settled on the fifth emerald, the one that floated alone and was that amazing gaslight blue like the sky at twilight.

"That blue one. That's what you were holding up on the Star Post hill last night, isn't it... Is that why it's off on its own like that? Because it's the newest one?"

A nod. "It is. I discovered it embedded in a cold-water reef off Crater Bay and finally managed to retrieve it yesterday." he fumbled and patted at the oversized pockets in his lab coat, looking for something. "Where did I put... ah, here we are. I think you'll recognise this, Sonic..."

"Huh?" blinking, Sonic looked across as Kintobor held out an object for him to take. A spiral seashell with small spines and a complex pattern of red, gold and blue. Sonic hefted the ammonite in the palm of his hand, recognising it as the same one he'd found among the dead leaves at the base of the Star Post.

Glancing from it to the blue Emerald, he noticed that the bright spots along the edge of the shell matched the gemstone's brilliant colouring almost exactly. The hedgehog frowned thoughtfully.

"You said that these shells were sensitive or something, and that's why it looks different." He gestured with the shell towards the tube. "So this thing must've lived around where the Emerald was... and that's why it went all weird like that. Wow... so these things _must _be pretty powerful..."

"Exactly," The scientist confirmed. "And as for why the Emeralds have paired themselves off like that... I'm still not entirely sure. I have a few theories, but it appears part of the answer is that they are attracted to other, similar sources of Chaos Energy. That helped me to locate the other Emeralds once I knew of the effect, since their energy is rather difficult to detect from a distance by normal means- along with clues such as the shell you're now holding. Without it it would have been far more difficult to pin down the exact location of the blue Emerald."

"Okay, that kinda makes sense." Sonic gave another slow nod. The pieces of the jigsaw were falling into place, the events of the past couple of days beginning to make a lot more sense now. But there were still a few really big puzzle pieces missing. "But you keep saying you're studying the Emeralds and that's gonna help Mobius somehow. How? And why here? I mean, we're pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Wouldn't you be better off in... I dunno, Metropolis or some city where you can get hold of all this high tech stuff for whatever you're doing? Motley's stall isn't exactly stuffed full of the latest gadgets."

"...And I should know. D'you know how hard it is to even get hold of a working TV around here?" The hedgehog shrugged a shoulder, giving a wry, crooked grin. Most of the wariness was gone, now, replaced with open curiosity.

"Not that I'm complaining about you or anything, dude. So long as you're not hurting anyone, I'm kind of glad you're down here. I mean, this village is flipping dull otherwise. It's about time something actually _happened _around here."

"Well, I'm glad I'm here to make your life interesting, Sonic." Kintobor replied, giving a little amused chuckle as he pushed his glasses further up his small wedge-like nose. "The secluded nature of the zone, though, is one of the reasons I'm here. It allows me to pursue my studies in relative peace, away from prying eyes and most importantly, away from politics." His expression soured briefly at that. "...but that isn't important right now. As I said, these caverns were perfect and I would be hard pressed to find a better location for my lab. I discovered them not long after the first Chaos Emerald. Whatever ancient civilisation was responsible for the ruins beneath this zone, they were an ingenious people- they left a ready-made system of rooms, complete with ventilation and well hidden enough that they would never be found- apart from by intrepid hedgehogs, of course."

"Told you you wouldn't be able to outrun me." Sonic chuckled, waving the ammonite at him.

"Yes, quite..."

"So... you're studying the Emeralds because they're some kind of power source? Like for electricity or something?"

"That's part of it, yes." The human scientist paused, giving a little frown. "But to think of them as something akin to coal or oil doesn't come close to doing them justice. The Chaos Energy within them is much more than just a fuel source."

"Legends say that the Emeralds can make anything possible because essentially, that is what Chaos Energy does," Kintobor continued.

"Like what?" Sonic's ears twitched back towards the human.

"Well, just look at them for a start." A slender pink hand gestured towards the five drifting gems, still locked in orbit around each other. "Those stones are not floating because the R.O.C.C is making them do so. They're doing it because Chaos Energy, in a high enough concentration and especially when reacting to another source- such as another Emerald- is capable of bending certain natural laws." He eyed the hedgehog and chuckled softly. Sonic was uncharacteristically still now, but the human had quickly noted how fidgety and impatient he could get in the face of dry facts. Like any boy his age, really. "I won't bore you with the technicalities of quantum physics. But you can see the effect the Emeralds have on the force of gravity, for example..."

"...So you could use them to make something fly- like a plane or- or a space ship?" Sonic blinked. "Hey, or that little pod thing you were flying around in before!"

"Very well observed, Sonic." He coughed lightly, looking down and scratching his head in what was obviously an embarrassed gesture. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, though. That is a perfectly ordinary hovercar, albeit of my own design. My work isn't quite... ah, advanced enough to build a Chaos-powered craft yet."

"But the Emeralds certainly _could _be used to propel a spacecraft, and not only that but power it too," he added quickly. "If you could keep them stable enough, of course. But the incredible thing is, that is only the tip of the iceberg. Nobody knows the true extent of the Emeralds' capabilities or how much energy they can house at any one time... but I do know they respond to certain stimuli. Exposure to certain strong emotions actually seem to cause their energy output to _increase._ As if those emotions were a source of Chaos Energy themselves and the Emeralds were absorbing it."

The man's eyes gleamed excitedly. "Do you realise what that means? The Emeralds have the potential to create something that human and Mobiankind have tried and failed to discover for centuries. Perpetual energy. A _self replenishing _power source, fuelled by the life force of the planet itself..."

...

Sonic listened as Kintobor's explanation continued, the human painting a picture of a world where engineless vehicles ran for years without a single drop of fossil fuel, personal robots made people's lives easier and more convenient, and cheap, clean energy powered Mobius' homes and industries. All this made possible by the R.O.C.C, which held the Emeralds' more volatile effects in check and allowed Kintobor to harvest the Chaos Energy his experiments required. As he spoke, the professor became more and more animated and his gestures more expansive. The enthusiasm in his voice and obvious pride in his work was enough to draw some of Sonic's attention back from the spinning Emeralds, dark brown eyes blinking at the tall human who was getting steadily louder and more breathless as he spoke- until he eventually trailed off, turning his gaze to the R.O.C.C and giving an awed shake of his head.

Sonic nodded, slowly. The passion Kintobor had for his work was plain to see, and it was infectious, too, the hedgehog grinning at the thought of the amazing things the Emeralds could do. There was one thing that still puzzled him, though, and when the scientist had finally finished he bit his lip a little, giving him a confused frown.

"Yeah, Doc..." he watched the emeralds spin for a moment longer, before glancing back over his shoulder. "But why do it in secret? I mean... that sounds like a pretty cool thing to aim for, right?"

At that, Doc sighed heavily- reminded that for all his earlier caution and apparent street smarts, the hedgehog was still just a child. And one from a very sheltered zone at that.

"Oh the naivety of youth..." he muttered to himself, too softly to be heard. Kintobor only wanted to help, and right some old wrongs. But his vision was also a controversial one which had raised both eyebrows and suspicion among certain authorities. Authorities he would rather have nothing to do with his project. If the rumours that had been passed down were true, the last thing he wanted was to have history repeat itself. He would remain in control of his own work until it was complete, and the only way to do that was... well, to do it where nobody was looking.

"Because there are others who would rather see the Emeralds used for much darker purposes. Where I see free energy for all, others may see profit. Or a way for themselves, their country or zone to dominate over their neighbour..." a headshake, at which Sonic first frowned, then wrinkled his nose in agreement. Odd, really... he saw that kind of thing happen in fiction all the time. But picturing it in real life was somehow harder. Thinking of a certain greyhound, though, he grimaced.

"Yeah, I guess... some people just suck like that," he muttered. "Anything to give 'em an edge and beat up the smaller guy."

"Exactly. Politics can be cruel, unfortunately. And power is a seductive thing, Sonic. In the wrong hands the Emeralds could become devastating weapons. I would rather see them used for peace; or in the worst case as a sort of non-lethal anti weapon, if you will. The Emeralds respond particularly well to negative emotions after all- now imagine a device which could subdue any conflict by harnessing the Emeralds' energy absorbing capabilities and stop the combatants even wanting to fight in the first place..."

"It'd kinda drain the bad right out of 'em. Heh..." Sonic murmured. "And lemme guess- all this stuff you're trying to do here... you're gonna need the last emerald to finish it."

"That's right. The readings from the emeralds change with each one I collect. You see how they have paired themselves off... If I collect all six known Emeralds, their power will be complete. And maybe I'll be able to better study how they work. As it is, I have had some limited success but..."

"But you need the last one to really make it all work. Heh... it's just like in all the stories. You've gotta get six before the really cool stuff happens. And if you get seven, a miracle happens. Like bringing the hero of the story back to life or whatever..."

"Ahem... I'm not sure the Emeralds are quite _that _powerful, and it's more along the lines of _finding _a seventh Emerald being the miracle if my luck so far is anything to go by. But you never know, and besides, that's all part of what I'm trying to find out..." a pause. "I'm very close to finding the sixth Emerald, Sonic. What Motley told me today ties in with several other leads I've been following up. So what do you say? Are you going to keep my presence to yourself, or do I have to start packing and hope I can relocate before the local authorities get here?"

"I'll be able to talk about it eventually though, right?"

"Oh, certainly. I plan on making my findings public one day, when I can prove without a doubt that the emeralds can be harnessed safely. But not yet, for now I'm afraid it will have to be our little secret."

Sonic eyed the chamber, nodding to himself as he came to a decision- before turning round, holding the ammonite shell out to the human and grinning, boldly.

"Okay, here's the way I see it, Doc. You've got this big secret project to work on, and I wanna make sure you aren't gonna blow up the world or something," he sniggered a little at that, since he honestly didn't believe the eccentric scientist was aiming for that anymore, "So you're kinda stuck with me there. Especially since I've been looking for the Emeralds as well and I'd be stupid to walk away from something this cool."

"Plus you'll never meet anyone as fast and agile as me." this said with all the assurance of pure fact, "I'm awesome at finding stuff and I can get into anything. You know that because I'm here. That makes me the perfect guy to help you out, so that's exactly what I'm gonna do- help you find that last Chaos Emerald." This time he did lean a little bit against the R.O.C.C, arms folded cockily. The excited, childlike gleam in his eyes belied the air of cool confidence he was trying to put across as he nonchalantly examined a glove, but there was a mild challenge in his voice as he lifted his eyes and concluded, "And you're not gonna stop me, either."

Kintobor blinked. And then blinked again.

"Well that was a little more... direct than I was expecting, Sonic." he scratched his head. "But honestly, I was rather hoping you'd say something like that..."

"Sooo... that's a yes?"

"Well, I could certainly use a little help around the lab, I suppose, so long as you don't-"

"_Sweet._"

It was hard not to grin back at the eager look on the little hedgehog's face. But Dr. Kintobor couldn't help but wonder exactly what he was getting himself into here. Neither could Sonic, but unlike the scientist that didn't really bother him too much- he had no idea what to expect, but he knew whatever it was would be unlike anything he had experienced before. He had that feeling again, that sense that he was at a crossroads and everything was changing around him. He couldn't wait to see where the new path led.

Whether the eventual destination would be a good one for either Sonic or Kintobor was another matter. But the hedgehog was right about one thing at least: his life was never going to be the same.

...


	12. Interlude: Chaos Theory

**Interlude 1**

.

[Extract from item #056, which appears to be a diary although most pertinent information has been torn out or damaged beyond reading. Prison Island database. Classified level 3 .]

_"...The normal state is passive: At low to medium exposure, there is little to no reaction within the object or organism itself other than an increase in temperature. Higher levels will typically distort gravity around the subject. Destructive levels typically result in damage comparable to extreme heat, radiation, or electricity. However, longterm or very high exposure has been seen to occasionally trigger a shift to one or more of the types listed below. They can also occur naturally._

_**Observed:**_

_1. Conductor. Allows C-energy to pass through the subject's structure quickly and efficiently, although the strength of this effect varies . Can withstand high exposure with little damage. Occurs naturally in certain compounds. Uncommon._

_2. Sensitive. Subject responds noticeably to nearby sources of C-energy as its own energy reacts. Most noticeable in living organisms as animals show agitated or abnormal behaviour. Inorganic objects may behave like magnets. Uncommon._

_3. Mutable. Subject physically alters in response to high exposure. This can manifest as mutations in the genetic structure of living organisms. Uncommon, but some plants and primitive organisms are highly susceptible._

_4. Battery. The opposite of a Conductor. Some C-energy passing through the subject is retained and stored, sometimes for long periods of time. Occurs naturally in certain compounds, but the effect is highly variable. Overloaded batteries may or may not be likely to explode. Rare._

_**Theorised from historical evidence/folklore:**_

_5. Syphon. Essentially an 'aggressive Battery.' Subject actively absorbs any C-energy in the immediate vicinity and either stores it or allows it to dissipate. Unseen. (Although Chaos Emeralds sometimes exhibit this effect, it is not constant and their properties place them in a class of their own)_

_6. *********** *** **** ******* **** * **** _[Classified. Level 2 clearance required]

_**Hypothetical:**_

_7. ********** *** ****** ** **** ** ***** *** _[Classified. Level 2 clearance required]

…

_*Note: Chaos is highly unpredictable and does not always follow the expected pattern. The above are broad generalisations._

_*Note 2: Six known effects of C-Energy, and one purely hypothetical. Coincidence...?_

[Rest of text made illegible by dense notation and staining]


	13. Secrets

**A/N Aaaand another shortish chapter... I've been waiting to post this forever. If anyone else has been having trouble uploading to the site, I've found a workaround- it's in my profile.**

**Thanks for all the reviews, people! :)**

..

**Chapter 12**

.

_The boy appears oddly fascinated with the Chaos Emeralds. I suppose it's only natural, given his age, that he be attracted to objects so steeped in rumour and mythology in his culture. But then... honestly sometimes I feel the same way. Otherwise I wouldn't have been studying them in the first place, after all. Perhaps it is not something related to age and upbringing, then, but a hunger for discovery that we both happen to share._

_Still, I cannot help but wonder if there is something more to this. It hardly seems like coincidence that he appeared that night on the Star Post hill after I recovered the blue Emerald... and then somehow negotiated the maze of caverns to find my laboratory._

_Sonic is an excitable child and only ever seems to be still when watching the Emeralds. I am beginning to wonder if he is actually drawn to them somehow... he doesn't seem aware of it, but perhaps there is some form of Chaos sensitivity there that guided him to me... people with such abilities are not unknown, although it is rare. Maybe..._

-Kintobor's notes

…

A week had passed since Sonic had taken off out of the market in pursuit of Lance. Johnny Lightfoot eyed his hedgehog friend, not quite sure whether to be concerned or pleased at the mood change that had come over him recently.

Sonic lounged in the grass, the light breeze of a typical sunny Emerald Hill day rustling through brown fur. In between swigs from a plastic cola bottle he was talking animatedly, as usual- trying to show Porker something or other on that old map he said he'd found at Motley's stall. The pig, who had been dragged out rather reluctantly by the hedgehog, was still trying his best to tinker with some broken device- a remote control for a video recorder by the look of it- but was either too polite or hadn't yet learned the art of ignoring hedgehog babble. Since Porker was prone to talking people's ears off when he got going himself, he wasn't getting anywhere with whatever he was working on, having to continually look up as Sonic tried to keep his attention- which often involved a sharp poke or two to the side whenever the pig did pull himself away after being drawn into conversation.

The grey rabbit shook his head, amused. Porker would learn eventually that you couldn't expect to get any work done when Sonic wanted to show something off. For now, though, he headed over towards the pair, intending to give Porker a break- and talk to Sonic, because there was obviously something going on that the hedgehog wasn't telling. That could be either good or very, very bad, in Sonic terms.

Sonic broke off as the taller Mobian dropped to sit next to the two of them in the grass.

"S'up, Johnny?" Sonic said, grinning easily as he wadded up the cloth map, and then shoved it back into his cuff pocket. He hadn't returned it to Kintobor- the human having assured him he could keep it as a reward for finding and returning the ammonite shell that he'd lost. Sonic had still protested that given what the map had cost it was too much of a reward for the return of a mere seashell- but Kintobor insisted that the shell might be important to his research and more valuable to him than Sonic thought, and besides, the hedgehog needed some sort of remuneration for the help he'd offered to provide around the lab.

Sonic hadn't protested too hard about this, since the map still had some of that allure that had made him want it so desperately in the first place- despite thinking privately that just _being _there was worth the simple errands Kintobor had him doing. Life wasn't dull anymore and he was getting to see (and prod, and break...) any number of interesting gadgets and inventions he could only guess the purpose of. And then there were the Emeralds. Every time he'd been in the lab, he found himself standing and staring at the five gems for minutes at a time, feeling that vague tug that made him wonder, sometimes, what would happen if that glass chamber were to open and put the gems within touching distance... then he'd shake his head, realise just how long he'd been standing there and move away to investigate something else, feeling unnerved and strangely excited at the same time.

For the first time he'd been right and now he really was part of something amazing. No wild imagination and eventual letdown this time- this was real, and it showed in his mood. Which only got him puzzled looks from his friends because, of course, he'd promised not to tell anyone about the hidden lab and the work going on there...

"That's what I was gonna ask _you,_" Johnny said, shaking his head. At the rabbit's mystified expression, Sonic sighed. That was the one problem with all of this. He didn't like keeping things back from people, _especially _from his friends and especially when he had a story to tell. The best one he'd ever had, actually, and he was just dying to at least brag about it a little... he'd ignored the urge to begin with, but as the days passed and his friends looked at him ever more oddly it got harder and harder to resist. At the same time he didn't want to break Kintobor's trust, either.

It would be worth it in the end, he assured himself.

"Mngh. Not again, dude, I told you I'm fine..." Sonic smiled at him, but evasively- draining the last of the cola and glancing across at Porker in the hope that there'd be some distraction there. The pig, who had gone back to trying to unpick a stubborn screw without the right sized screwdriver, looked up and shrugged a shoulder.

"W...well... sorry, Sonic, but you _have_ been acting kind of strangely lately..."

"Thanks, you're a great help." the irked hedgehog rolled his eyes. "Seriously though, there's nothing wrong... apart from you guys nagging me all the time."

Johnny shuffled in place to get himself more comfortable, drawing long legs up to his chest and resting his arms across his knees. "He's got a point, though. Ever since last market day, you've been kind of..." He trailed off with a vague wave of a hand, at a loss.

"What? Can't a guy be in a good mood?" Sonic's ears folded, the brown hedgehog almost squirming uncomfortably under Johnny's concerned blue stare. "C'mon, you were moaning that I was too grumpy last week, leave off!"

"That's not exactly it." A headshake, and hand ran back over long grey ears, which were slanted backwards a little with the rabbit's confusion. "Sonic, you vanished! I know, you're always wandering off somewhere, but this was just odd."

Johnny sighed. "You didn't even show up after we agreed to meet at the loop, and it's _not_ like you to miss a chance at that... with Lance going around spreading rumours about you falling in the river, we had half the village out looking for you."

"Yeah, like it's ever worth listening to him..." The hedgehog snorted sharply.

"I mean it, we were worried. You could have been hurt somewhere." Sonic glanced at Johnny, who a decidedly stern look on his face. Porker was again no help whatsoever- he'd turned back to his gadget, little floppy pig ears flattened as much as they could- giving him the look of someone who sensed an argument brewing and wanted nothing to do with it. Sonic shot a glare at the back of his head, annoyed.

"And then you turn up the next morning, munching on a cucumber sandwich and acting like nothing happened. Except that you've done nothing but grin all week and I haven't heard a thing about that Star Post or anything else ever since... What's going on, Sonic?"

Johnny persisted, puzzled. Not even Lance and Brindle's goading about some race Sonic had apparently lost had seemed to faze the hedgehog much lately. He'd snapped back at the the greyhound and badger as per usual, of course, but most of the simmering, helpless fury was gone now- replaced with what seemed to be a _genuine _air of superiority. As if Sonic knew something they didn't and they weren't even worth the time to argue with anymore. In one sense that was a very good thing- since it meant there hadn't been any more fights and Sonic had actually walked away from one or two of the little altercations. Which was a welcome first.

On the other hand, though, Sonic wouldn't act like that without a reason. And although the hedgehog had always had an arrogant streak, Johnny wasn't sure he liked how it seemed to have got that much wider recently...

"It's like talking to a brick wall lately. Why won't you tell anyone what happened?"

"I _did. _I got lost in the caves again, remember?" the hedgehog resolutely looked away, fidgeting with the empty pop bottle. "Sheesh, Johnny... you're starting to sound like your dad..."

At that, the rabbit paused, silently shaking his head. Sonic may have thought he was off the hook when that silence went on for a good half minute- but when he looked across, his hopeful glance was met with a sceptical, raised eyebrow. For a few more seconds the two of them just looked at each other like that, Sonic appearing more and more uncomfortable under his friend's searching stare- before Johnny broke the stalemate by shoving lightly at the younger Mobian's side.

"Ow! Hey!" Sonic protested. And purposefully exaggerated his recoil from the little shove, knocking into Porker who yelped and promptly dropped the remote into the grass. "What was that for?"

"Sonic, you are an absolutely terrible liar." Johnny folded his arms, giving the hedgehog a _look._ "And you always have been. Tell us."

"M'not lying." Sonic muttered, ears completely flat against his head now. He wasn't lying... exactly! Just kind of leaving out a few things... at Johnny's continued stare, the hedgehog abruptly stood up, stepping over Porker's legs to put some distance between himself and that penetrating stare and give himself more room to pace and fidget like he suddenly wanted to.

Johnny didn't actually reply though. He just continued to watch Sonic. Patiently. The skinny hedgehog tried to avoid that gaze as long as he could, looking anywhere but at the steady blue eyes... but eventually the stare drilling into his back was too much and he whipped round, frustrated- not to mention more than a bit torn.

"-What? Stop looking at me like that!" his voice had practically risen to a whine, now. "I really did get lost, okay?"

"And...?" Johnny prompted. A look of defeat passed over Sonic's face, just briefly. It was enough to have Porker blinking at the rabbit appreciatively.

"...wow, you're good at that..."

"I have a lot of practice." Johnny smirked, before eyeing Sonic again. "Well?"

"C'mon... stop ganging up on me, huh?" the hedgehog pouted, a bottom lip sticking out just a bit. When Johnny's calm stare and Porker's curious one didn't relent at the kicked-puppy face, Sonic huffed and looked away. "Gah... look, I can't tell you yet, all right?"

He turned to gaze pensively at the countryside stretching into the distance, running a hand through his quills. The young hedgehog shook his head. Out of all the incredible things that had happened in the past few days, this was one part that he was finding hard to deal with.

"...But I'm gonna..." a pause, before he finally turned and met the questioning gazes of the other two teens. He continued in a voice that got gradually faster, building into the machine-gun rattle of a worked-up Sonic. "Promise. I'm onto something and it's big and awesome and you two are so not gonna believe it when I tell you. Heh, you know me, I'm I can't flipping _wait _to tell you everything. But right now I just can't." His deep brown eyes seemed to flash with that intense, eager look Johnny knew only too well, but this time there was something more sincere and certain to it than he had seen before. Whatever his big secret was, Sonic really believed in it this time. "I was right- finally right about something. Like you can't imagine. Just... trust me, okay?" He finished with a winning grin, completely honest this time.

"I knew it... you're plotting something again." Johnny replied with a wry smile, shaking his head and shifting back onto his elbows. His sigh was both long-suffering and rather resigned. "You have an Idea and I know what your _Ideas _are like, Sonic. They usually end in some sort of trouble and I have a feeling this is going to end the same way."

Sonic made a sulky face and his mouth opened, but the calm rabbit lifted a hand to silence him, the wry smile still in place but eyes serious.

"...I haven't finished. You're my friend, and I _do _trust you, so I'm going to accept that whatever it is you're up to, this time I'm not going to be able to _stop_ you. I just don't want you getting hurt or arrested or-"

"Yes daaaad. Fiiiiine, if something screws up I'll let you know, promise, blah blah blah..." he rolled his eyes.

"Then that'll have to do, I suppose."

"….It is _safe, _right? Whatever you're doing?" Porker spoke up, looking dubious.

"...oh don't you start. Don't worry, I know exactly what I'm doing... nobody's gonna get hurt, nothing bad's gonna happen, everything will be fine."

Johnny's hand went to his face at that, the rabbit peering at Sonic through spread fingers as he gave a soft, dismayed groan.

"If I had a carrot for every time I heard that, I'd be a fat bunny..." he muttered under his breath, unable to shake a sense of foreboding at his friend's confident statement. Porker didn't look too convinced either, regarding Johnny with an almost pitying expression at what he had to put up with.

"You do sound like his dad or something..." he said in a near-whisper, giving a little sympathetic smile.

"Well you get used to- OW!"

He cut off with a yelp at the hollow _bok _of a thrown plastic bottle bouncing lightly off rabbit skull, before rebounding into Porker's lap and causing a second yelp.

"-Sonic!"

"I can still hear you two, y'know..."

…

A while later, Sonic picked his way across a boulder-strewn hillside, alone. This was one of the rockier parts of the zone, not too far away from where he'd had his fateful race with Lance- but his worn-out trainers might as well have been spiked mountain boots going by the confidence with which he navigated the uneven terrain. He knew this particular spot pretty well, or so he'd thought; but as it turned out there was a lot more going on beneath his feet than he could have imagined...

Well, he knew now. Sonic smirked to himself, looking around until he spotted a familiar curve of stone, the remnants of another broken loop tumbled across the ground. The landmark marked a spot where the ground bulged up into a hump and overhung, creating a natural shadowed hollow underneath that was difficult to spot until you were right on top of it. The hedgehog scampered over and hopped down into the dip, which seemed pretty dull and featureless from the inside- just a little scoop out of the ground that was too shallow to be called a cave, containing little but a few clumps of foliage and a featureless wall of moss.

Sonic, though, seemed to know exactly what he was looking for. He reached for one of the bushy plants- which seemed to be a little too green for something that had grown in a shaded nook. That was because it hadn't. The plant hadn't grown anywhere. It was plastic, potted, and Sonic moved it aside easily to reveal what looked like a small monitor screen with a tiny number keypad attached to it. Both looked like they had seen better days; the screen showed only the black and white static that Sonic was all too familiar with from his own adventures with television sets, and the keypad was rusted around the edges. A bright green light glowed in the corner of it, though.

The hedgehog made a little tch sound under his breath, then frowned for a moment, thinking.

"What was the... oh, right."

A gloved finger repeatedly jabbed at the keypad, inputting a series of numbers. The monitor made an odd kind of whirring sound and Sonic glanced expectantly at the moss wall, ears swivelling forwards- but nothing seemed to happen after a moment and his frown deepened, the teenager cursing under his breath as he looked back down to see that little LED light had turned red.

"Oh, what. C'mon..."

Muttering under his breath, Sonic tried again- placing his fingers more carefully this time as he keyed in the passcode. The little pad was fiddly, the buttons smaller than he was used to- but then it was probably easier for Kintobor, who didn't seem to wear gloves habitually like many Mobians did.

"One, nine, six, five, zero, nine, one, seven... Work, stupid thing, I don't wanna kick you." The computer whirred again, the light switching to green again. "There!"

Sonic grinned, turning to watch as a mechanical whine heralded the opening of a concealed door in the little hollow, a large section of the mossy wall swinging inwards. Glancing around quickly to make sure that nobody was watching, he replaced the potted plant and walked through the revealed opening. It lead into a wide, dim stone corridor that sloped downwards- another ancient passageway, re-purposed for modern ends.

A few steps in, fluorescent bulbs flickered into life overhead and Sonic looked over his shoulder to see the entrance swing shut again with a laboured creak and thump, hiding the secret passage from the outside. He couldn't help but chuckle softly at that; even though he'd seen all this several times by now it was still impressive to the inexperienced hedgehog.

"Cool..."

Sonic didn't stand and stare for long though. There were more interesting things below than yet another tunnel... he trotted down the gentle slope, reaching a set of double doors at the bottom which once again required him to type in a code to unlock. Once he'd passed this last barrier, Sonic found himself back in Dr. Kintobor's sprawling, cluttered lab.

He paused for a few moments before setting off to look for the professor, just looking. As usual- and in a manner much like his own house, if he was honest- the place was a mess; a sort of semi-organised chaos in which some piles of... stuff stood untouched and identical to the way they looked yesterday, while others looked like someone had taken to them with a steamroller. Some of the freestanding machines and giant computer towers were on castors and capable of being moved, which they seemingly did of their own accord; if the lab was a maze, then it was one that changed every day.

The young hedgehog was beginning to feel at home amidst the eccentric clutter. Some of Kintobor's work was boring, but there was usually some new distraction elsewhere in the lab to divert him. He found that once he was in the lab he didn't mind the furtive secret keeping so much... in fact he barely thought of it at all. Besides, Kintobor had said he'd reveal his work to the world when it was completed and the last Emerald had been recovered- and the hedgehog couldn't wait to see the looks on everyone's faces when they found out about the part that 'useless' little Sonic kid had played in it all.

It was going, he thought to himself, to be totally _awesome._

...


End file.
